The September 11th attack
Hawai'i victims remembered
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
From aboard a tourism ship off Waikiki and in the staid sanctuary of the Thurston Chapel at Punahou, friends and families of two of Hawai'i's victims of the terrorism attacks remembered loved ones yesterday, even as the country launched military action against Afghanistan.
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At the memorial services, grief mixed with patriotism, and expressions of fear combined with courageous sentiment.
Georgine Rose Corrigan was remembered during a service at sea.
At Punahou, about 500 friends, family, classmates and teachers of Richard Yun Choon Lee, 34, recalled the former football star's interception and 99-yard touchdown run against Pac5 in 1986, and his winning goal for the state soccer title a year later at the "mud bowl" contest with Iolani at Moanalua field.
Lee, of New York, was vice president of an Internet firm in the north tower of the World Trade Center. His wife, Karen, last heard from him on Sept. 11, when he called her to say he was being evacuated.
On the Star of Honolulu yesterday, about 300 mourners honored businesswoman Georgine Rose Corrigan, 56, of Hawai'i Kai, with the accompaniment of dolphins swimming alongside, rose petals dropping from a helicopter above, and colored doves being released into 30 mile per hour winds.
Corrigan was aboard United Airlines Flight 93, one of four airliners commandeered on Sept. 11. Her brother Kevin Marisay said he was sure Corrigan joined the passengers who rushed hijackers to keep Flight 93 from being flown into the White House or other Washington landmark, forcing the jetliner into a nosedive crash in a Pennsylvania field.
Lee's family distributed American flag pins with a tricolor ribbon.
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Corrigan's family passed out memorial buttons with her portrait and with red, white and blue bunting.
His brothers recall Richard Yun Choon Lee's desire to live out his dreams.
Corrigan's daughter, Laura Brough, broke into tears when she said she was saddened by yesterday's military action, "because I don't want any more Americans to die because of what happened to my mother."
But the Corrigan mourners also burst into applause when her brother Robert Marisay, Jr., said, "I support the president, 100 percent."
At the Lee services, mourners focused more on Lee's past than on the way he died.
Buddy and Alex Lee recalled an older brother who always stood by them and urged them to live their dreams. "And when I asked him how his dream was coming," Buddy Lee recalled yesterday, "he said, 'I am living it.' "
Dr. Tarquis Collins, who was Lee's childhood best friend, read a letter to Lee's son, Zachary, not yet 2 years old, describing Lee in his youthful prime, running across dew-covered grass, smiling to himself, as the laughter of friends flashed by.
Mourners sang "America, The Beautiful," and then 50 classmates came to the chapel floor to lead Punahou's school song:
"Sons of O'ahu, with courage brave and true ... we'll always stand together ... We'll fight, boys, to the last."
