They were first cousins and best friends. Their mothers were also best friends and were in the back seat of the Honda Civic that was stopped for a traffic light on Chestnut Street.
Melissa Cook was driving, and next to her was Jill Semplinski Nelson, 28, who had flown from her home in Kansas to celebrate Cook’s 30th birthday Sunday.
To their left, just ahead in the next lane, was a Nissan Maxima driven by Nanatta Cameron, 39. The Hyde Park woman was living her dreams–she had just gotten married and quit her job of 14 years to become a teacher.
The scaffolding that fell 42 stories from the John Hancock Center crushed the Honda–killing the cousins but somehow sparing their mothers.
It killed Cameron, but two passengers in her car survived.
A few feet away, Near South Side resident Katie Hession watched from the front seat of her Jeep Cherokee. Debris smashed her front window.
“I guess I need to be nicer to my family and trust that God was taking care of me because it really could have been me,” a shaken Hession said Sunday.
Hundreds of others–some on foot, some in cars and trucks–spent Sunday like Hession, wondering why they were spared.
A lifetime of friendship had brought Nelson and Cook to Chestnut Street on Saturday.
They were both raised in Merrillville, where the two tall, thin brown-haired girls–both their mothers’ only children–were seen as more than cousins.
“They were so close, they were more like sisters,” said Bessie Semplinski, one of their aunts from the tight-knit family of northwest Indiana steelworkers and teachers.
Both graduated from Merrillville High School, Cook in 1990 and Nelson in 1992.
Cook, a three-sport star in high school, attended the University of Notre Dame on a softball scholarship and earned an accounting degree. She was working as a comptroller for the Teamsters union in Chicago and lived in the Lakeview neighborhood.
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Nelson went to Purdue University, graduating with a degree in business before going to work for General Motors, where she met her husband, Josh.
A year and a half ago, Cook, known as “Mo” by her family, was Nelson’s maid of honor when 300 friends and family gathered at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Merrillville for her wedding. So it was no surprise to other family when Nelson flew to Chicago from her home in Olathe, Kan., to be at Cook’s birthday party, set for a Lincoln Park bar Saturday.
Joining them would have been Nelson’s parents, Jim and Betty Semplinski, and Cook’s divorced parents, Linda Demo and David Cook, who all flew in from Florida, where they all moved after retiring from jobs in northwest Indiana.
Betty Semplinski, 56, was upgraded to fair condition from critical Sunday morning, according to a Cook County Hospital spokesman.
With all of the family in town, “it was going to be a big celebration for Mo,” said Bessie Semplinski.
Cameron had headed downtown with two Chicago friends, Peggy Whittaker, 53, and her daughter, Michelle, 24.
Michelle Whittaker was released Sunday from County Hospital, the spokesman said. At Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Peggy Whittaker remained in critical condition with injuries to her thigh, spine and right hand.
Cameron had recently gotten married, said her neighbors in the 4500 block of South Woodlawn Avenue. In September she quit her job as a senior finance manager at Kraft Foods to pursue her dream of becoming a teacher.
“She always wanted to teach elementary school. So she decided now was the time to do it,” said a relative who declined to be named.
It wasn’t known what brought Cameron and the Whittakers to Chestnut Street about 1:45 p.m. Saturday, but it put them just two cars ahead and a lane over from Cook, Nelson and their mothers.
After a couple of hours of shopping, they had headed into the blustery, cold afternoon pulling out of a parking garage onto Chestnut Street.
Cook stopped briefly to let another driver get out ahead of them and then stopped again a half block away to let Buffalo Grove resident Elyce Hanna make it across the street to the Lord & Taylor building.
“The young girl driving, she smiled and made the motion with her hand to go ahead,” Hanna said. “I smiled at her and just went across the street.”
As she stepped into the street, Hanna began hearing what sounded like “someone knocking two baking pans together, only it was getting closer and closer, and I got scared. I didn’t know what it was, but I hurried across the street.”
Just as she grabbed the door handle at Lord & Taylor, “I heard a tremendous crash, and I looked back and the car was flattened,” Hanna said. “If she hadn’t let me across the street then, I would have been killed, I’m sure of it. It hit right where I had been standing.”
Hanna ran inside the building, afraid to look back.
For those who knew Cameron, said Mudd, it was a devastating chain of events.
“It just boggles my mind how random it all was, how it could have happened to anybody,” Mudd said. “Nanatta was just starting a new life, and it had to happen to her.”
As they try to sort through their grief, relatives say Nelson and Cook will have a double funeral and be buried side by side.
“It’s going to be tough forever now,” David Cook said.