MADAWASKA – Tuesday’s catastrophes in New York City, Washington D.C., and rural Pennsylvania have been personal tragedies for thousands of people across the country, including Cyril and Agnes Beaulieu of Madawaska with the death of their son-in-law, Donald Greene of Greenwich, Conn.

Greene was among the 45 people flying to San Francisco on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a field in the western Pennsylvania town of Shanksville.

Greene, 52, who was flying to California on business, was the husband of the Beaulieus’ daughter, Claudette, and father to their two grandchildren, Charles, 10, and Jody, 6. Donald and Claudette Greene had been married for nearly 11 years and they were annual visitors to Madawaska and the St. John Valley.

Ironically, Greene, a New York native, was vice president of a White Plains, N.Y., company called Safe Flight Instruments Corp. The company is owned by his father, Leonard Greene.

Investigators believe Flight 93, taken over by hijackers, was then bound for Washington, D.C., and that someone or a group of passengers inside the plane may have made a heroic effort to bring it down away from a populated area.

Asked if she thought her son-in-law might have taken part in such an effort, Agnes Beaulieu replied, “Definitely, without question.

“He’s an incredible person who would be looking to help others,” she said. “With his knowledge of aviation, he would have noticed early on that something was happening.”

Beaulieu said the family didn’t hear from Greene by cell phone from the plane, as other families did from the four planes that crashed in the three locations.

“I know he was our son-in-law, but he was truly a nice man, a nice person,” Beaulieu said Thursday afternoon. “He came here every year with his family.

“He was not a stranger from the moment we met him,” she said. “Now this horror has touched this community.”

Greene flew the company plane to the St. John Valley on many occasions, using Northern Aroostook Regional Airport in Frenchville on his numerous flights, his mother-in-law said. Greene and Claudette Greene traveled there regularly each year in August, as they had done since 1990, a year before the couple was married.

The husband and wife would have celebrated their 11th anniversary next month.

Donald and Claudette Greene met at a fund-raiser for the New Westchester Symphony Orchestra, in White Plains, N.Y. Claudette Greene was executive director of the orchestra during the late 1980s.

“They had a ball the first time they met,” Beaulieu said. “It was – I know this sounds incredible, but that’s the way it was – as if he came down from heaven.”

Of Tuesday’s tragedies, Beaulieu predicted: “By the time this is over, most communities in this country will be touched by this. I hope it will stop at some point, all this horror.

“Why don’t these people use their minds to do something good?” she said, referring to the terrorists who committed the atrocities.

Prayers for Greene were said Wednesday night at a Mass for Justice and Peace at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church.

An ecumenical funeral service will be held for Greene next week in Connecticut.