Jeanette Symons packed a lot into a tragically short life
Sometimes a tragedy strikes close to home, and sometimes it does so quite literally.
Such was the tragedy that occurred on Friday, February 1, 2008, when a Cessna Citation C-525 crashed into the woods near West Gardiner, Maine, just minutes after takeoff from Augusta State Airport.
The pilot was Jeanette Symons, 45; his only passenger, his son, Balan, 10 years old. Seemingly eager to return home after a week attending Sugarloaf ski camp, they took off in extremely unfavorable weather conditions. They did not make it.
For me, this plane crash impacted me in several ways. First, West Gardiner, Maine is only a few miles from my home. She must have practically flown over my house just before her plane sank, and one of the volunteer fire departments that responded to the accident was from my hometown of Manchester.
Second, the house they were going to is Steamboat Springs, Colorado; I have also lived in Colorado. Third, Ms. Symons had been involved in business in the San Francisco Bay Area, founding companies that helped shape the Internet as it exists today; I have also lived in the Bay Area. Ultimately, she was a stratospherically successful entrepreneur of the kind I only dream of being.
The weather at the time – a nasty mix of freezing rain, sleet and snow that most locals struggled to avoid driving – was certainly a factor in the accident. All the why’s and how’s have yet to be resolved, and the investigation is expected to take between six months and a year.
Meanwhile, he leaves behind a 7-year-old daughter, Jennie, her parents, and two brothers. And of course many admirers, of which I would consider myself one, although, to be honest, I can’t say for sure if I had ever heard of her before this tragedy made big headlines on page 1 of my journal. .
Jeanette Symons was a “serial entrepreneur,” said her friend and co-worker Tim Donovan. She was named the nation’s richest woman under 40 by Fortune magazine in 2001, and reportedly had a net worth of $ 374 million that year. She was a co-founder of Zhone Technologies, a telecommunications startup, and Ascend Communications Inc., a provider of wide area network solutions, which Lucent Technologies bought for more than $ 20 billion in 1999. Her latest company, Industrious Kid, runs a web site for young children.
“I wanted to bring people together and make good things happen,” Donovan said. “She was an amazing person, a fabulous and practical mother, and a great friend. We will all miss her.”
The world needs a book on Jeanette Symons. Is anyone working on this?
