Five Years Later, 9/11's Survivors

Victims Struggle To Move On

(CBS) 
"At first, I feel bad because you know it's like I hurt and then I have the scar and you know, people look at me, I feel embarrassed," Mututanont said. "I kind of want to hide it. But then, time passed I think I came through that. I have to be stronger than that."

She now lives in Thailand, but she would return to New York in a heartbeat. It may be where her old life ended, but it's also where her new life began.

"September 11 is like my birthday — my birthday — my second birthday now," Mututanont said. "I can claim that it is my birthday. Yeah, because life on that day, you know, I almost died on that day. But I decided to live my life. So I live."

Elizabeth Wainio went down with United Flight 93 in this Pennsylvania field. When CBS News first met her family, her stepmother Esther Heyman talked about the heart wrenching phone call with her daughter who was trying to say goodbye.

"Then after a point she said they were getting ready to break into the cockpit, and she needed to hang up, and she said I love you, good bye, and that was that," Heyman said.

Five years later, Elizabeth's father Ben, who missed the phone call that day, says he still talks to Elizabeth on the phone.

"I called Elizabeth, I still have her phone and we still pay her phone bill," he said. "And I called her this morning from the beach to tell her that I was on the beach. And I left her a message."

Together they have been working tirelessly for a memorial at the sight and had another daughter graduate from high school and a son go off and get married. Life has moved on, even if it doesn't always seem so.

"I feel she passed the scepter to me when she talked to be on the phone," Ben Wainio said. "And no matter how sorry for myself at moments I might feel, you know, there's this little Elizabeth angel kicking my tail and saying, 'Get on with it, and you know, do it well, and have some fun.'"