Students at Centennial School can see something of themselves in the old class picture of first-grader Leslie Whittington.

Whittington raced around their playground, studied in their classrooms, ate in their cafeteria and checked out books from their library. She lived in their neighborhood, at 2611 Belle Haven Drive, when she was a Centennial student in the early 1960s.

That connection will be embraced at 1 p.m. Wednesday with dedication of the Leslie Whittington library collection at Centennial, 2145 La.

The 85 books were paid for with donations and the titles selected with help from Centennial students.

“It is very appropriate,” said Leslie’s mother, Ruth Whittington Koch, of Athens, Ga. “They were such a reading family.”

Whittington, 45, her husband, Charles Falkenberg, and their two daughters, Zoe, 8, and Dana, 3, were killed Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists piloted an airliner into the Pentagon.

The University Park, Md., family was on American Airlines Flight 77 that was to have taken them on the first leg of a trip to Australia. The Centennial alumna had accepted a teaching fellowship at Australian National University in Canberra.

A professor of economics at Georgetown University, Whittington was respected for her work on the economic role and status of women, and the effect of tax policy on family life.

Leslie Whittington reads Pigs-a-Plenty with her daughter Zoe in this Christmas 1994 photograph. Centennial School, which Whittington attended in the 1960s, will dedicate a library book collection to her memory. Whittington and her family were killed Sept. 11, 2001, in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon.

Former Centennial classmate Debra Gelbach Rowden, of Lawrence, also will remember Whittington as the girl with “beautiful, long, straight, blond hair.”

“She was nice and smart,” said Rowden, who was in Whittington’s second-grade class. “She was a really cool person, even at that age. I wrote ‘best friends’ under her picture in a scrap book I saved.”

Whittington was born in Topeka and lived in Lawrence from 1958 to 1964, Koch said. Her father, H.G. Whittington, was a psychiatrist at Kansas University’s Watkins Health Center, and then director of the Bert Nash Mental Health Clinic. He now lives in Houston.

Whittington went to Centennial through fourth grade. She then moved to Denver, where she graduated from high school.

Leslie Whittington, front row, center, is shown with her first-grade class at Centennial School.

After earning a bachelor’s degree from Regis University in Denver and a master’s degree and doctorate at the University of Colorado, Whittington taught at the University of Maryland before moving to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

She married Charles Falkenberg in Colorado in the 1980s.

“It’s a tragic situation,” said Katie Armitage, who recalled Whittington attending birthday parties for her own daughter, Karole. “She (Whittington) had really done it all. A career, family. It’s a great legacy for Centennial.”

Armitage, of Lawrence, helped organize the library memorial.

Gina Grigaitis, principal at Centennial, said Whittington was an inspiration in life and death.

Leslie Whittington as a Centennial School student in the early 1960s.

“Our students were very touched and saddened by the fact that a person who attended the school was killed in that incident,” Grigaitis said.

Last year, the school dedicated its yearbook to Whittington.

“What we have emphasized with the children is that every person makes a difference. She started at Centennial. She had goals and dreams. She took her life and made something wonderful with it.

Leslie Whittington and her husband, Charles Falkenberg, shown in this photo from 1988, died Sept. 11, 2001, with their two children in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon.

“Lives like this are to be celebrated.”

On Wednesday the students of Centennial will wear special “Leslie Whittington Day” buttons.

After memorial speeches in the afternoon, they’ll walk to a new plaque at the library noting the memorial book collection.

They’ll go outside and grab one of the 300 balloons to be released in Whittington’s memory.

And students will be given a packet of zinnia flower seeds. Whittington’s girls liked to plant flowers.

“We want them to plant a Leslie garden — a peace garden,” Grigaitis said.

¢ Terror victim honored Get involvedDedication of the Leslie Whittington library collection at Centennial School, 2145 La., is set for 1 p.m. Wednesday. The public is invited. Donations to the book collection can still be made through the Lawrence Schools Foundation, 110 McDonald Drive, Lawrence 66044. The collectionStudents at Centennial School helped pick books for the Leslie Whittington library collection.Books were purchased with donations that honor Whittington, who died with her husband and two children in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon.Book choices reflect interests of Whittington’s family members.A sample:¢ “Shoes for Grandpa.”¢ “The Story of the White House.”¢ “The Ballet Bug.”¢ “Australia.”¢ “Circle of Fire.”¢ “Reader’s Theatre for Children.”