Martha Reszke

Martha Reszke’s husband, James, headed to the Pentagon on Tuesday morning after learning it had been hit by a plane, praying the damage had not been in the part of the building where she worked as a civilian budget analyst for the Army.

“But when he got there, he knew immediately; it had gone right through her office,” said the victim’s sister-in-law, Paulette Reszke.

Martha Reszke, 56, of Stafford, Va., began work at the Pentagon about five years ago when James, a career Army master sergeant, was transferred there from Germany. When he retired three years ago, she remained at her job because she enjoyed it so much. She’d held the same job when they were stationed in Germany.

“We are just lost without her,” said her sister-in-law. “You just cannot believe what a special person she was. She’d do anything for anybody.”

Reszke, the mother of two grown children and grandmother of seven, was born in Germany and moved to the U.S. as a teenager. She met her husband when he was stationed near her home in Savannah, Ga. They loved traveling the world and Reszke was known in her town as a superb gardener, her family said.

Her body has not been recovered. Her son-in-law, Fred Brown, a sergeant who serves in the Army on the Pentagon emergency search team, has been carrying blueprints of her office with him, in an attempt to locate her body.