From Maud With Love

By GREG BISCHOF

MAUD, Texas--When Holmdel, N.J., resident Eric Stahlman telephoned his two children shortly after 8 a.m. Sept. 11, to wish them a good day, he never knew it would be his last.

Stahlman, along with at least 700 of his co-workers, were in the offices of the Cantor Fitzgerald investment firm on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower when the first terrorist-hijacked passenger airliner hit the building roughly 30 minutes after he talked to his children--a 7-year-old daughter, Allison, and 4-year-old son, Jacob.

But although both children lost their dad, a Maud couple is hoping to ease the kids' grief by helping them gain a lively, furry 66-pound friend.

Coulee Creek Labrador breeder Chuck Roland and his wife, Mary Anne, said a heart-felt good-bye to one of their favorite labs, "Water Witch,"as she boarded an Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight Sunday at Texarkana Regional Airport.

Peering through the wire of a red-, white- and blue-laced kennel, the yellow lab set out on a 1,200-mile trip that eventually would take it to Newark International Airport and into the joyful arms of both children.

"She always been one of my favorites," Roland said referring to his 3-year-old lab who derived her name from her playful fondness for water. "She would always make me laugh because she loves to make people laugh and I hope she will bring some joy to these kids' lives. She loves water because you can't keep her out of it."

Unlike other many other canines sent to the tragic World Trade Center site on search and rescue missions, Water Witch finds herself going on a mission of mercy, because, like many of her breed, she is a therapy dog--one trained to comfort grief-stricken people.

A chance meeting between the Stahlman children's mother, Blanca, and one of Roland's other Coulee Creek yellow labs named "Kate" secured Water Witch's trip to a permanent New Jersey home with Allison and Jacob.

Shortly after the terrorist attack, Mrs. Stahlman and her sister, Shirley, boarded a ferry across the Hudson River carrying grief-stricken families, along with American Red Cross spiritual counselors and the lab Kate, to the site of the WTC in lower Manhattan's financial district.

During the ferry trip across the Hudson, Mrs. Stahlman became amazed at the love and warmth expressed to her by the yellow lab, which prompted Shirley to ask Kate's Red Cross handler, Pat Dickenson, more about this type of canine and how she might go about contacting the yellow lab's breeder.