"Len Gengel cries between sentences. "It's my daughter's birthday today," he says, choking back tears.
"We should be celebrating," he says. "Instead, I'm talking to people all day long, making sure they continue on the search and rescue. That's my objective today: to keep that search and rescue going."
Gengel's daughter, Britney, is one of four students from South Florida's Lynn University who are missing amid the rubble of Haiti's Hotel Montana. Two faculty members from the university also remain missing.
Britney, a sophomore journalism major with jet black hair and a bright smile, turned 20 Thursday. She had traveled to Haiti with 12 Lynn University students on a humanitarian mission to feed the poor. Eight of the students were rescued last week.
An hour before the magnitude-7.0 quake, Britney called her mother. "Brit said she found her calling, that she knew what she wanted to do for the rest of her life," her father said, pausing to catch his breath.
"Who knew an hour later that was going to happen? It's so hard to talk about. ... Think of the worst day of your life and then times that by 1,000."
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via www.cnn.com
It's just so heartbreaking. Yet I keep watching to remind myself of the few things that really matter, and possibly even finding a way to make things better. Because it's easy to feel something for a moment and then forget about it as life returns to it's day to day grind. But for these people, well...they can never go back.
