America's bloodiest day
Tragedy touches Hawai'i families
Correction: A previous version of this story erroneously listed Jude Larson, whose real name is Jude Olsen, and his wife, Natalie, among the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks based on a false report. Further information on the false report can be found in a Sept. 20 story.
Advertiser Staff
Before the numbness had a chance to wear off, horror gave way to disbelief yesterday as Hawai'i families learned they had been touched by tragedy.
A newlywed in Kailua became a widower when his arborist wife died in a crash near a Pennsylvania forest.
Georgine Corrigan
Christine Snyder
Heather Ho
Maile Hale
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Rich Y.C. Lee
A Maui artist lost his son, daughter-in-law and future grandchild.
In Hawai'i Kai, a 4-year-old now tells people his grandmother is an angel.
And others waited by the phone hoping for calls that wouldn't come.
These are their stories:
Georgine Corrigan
Thousands of people in Hawai'i may recognize Georgine Corrigan because of her many career incarnations.
She was a bank teller, a Liberty House hair salon manager and a pawnshop broker before her younger brother got her into the antiques business.
As a collectibles dealer for more than a decade, she specialized in 1950s rhinestone jewelry and briefly owned Courtyard Antiques shop at Kilohana Square in Kapahulu.
She also was an artist who created silhouette pictures of people and painted glass Christmas ornaments that she sold at craft fairs.
Corrigan, 56, was returning Tuesday from the East Coast after helping her brother, Kevin Mari-
say, run a booth at last week's Brimfield Antique Show in Massachusetts.
Marisay, of Teaneck, N.J., was the one who drove Corrigan to the airport.
She arrived early enough to make the 8 a.m. United Airlines Flight 93 heading from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco.
It was the terror-filled flight in which air traffic controllers reported they could hear screaming over the cockpit radio and passengers made phone calls saying they were being hijacked.
Two hours after it took off, the plane nose-dived into a Pennsylvania field and killed all 38 passengers and seven crew members aboard.
"I understand people on that airplane attacked the hijackers," her brother said. "My sister would have led them in any way, shape or form."
Friends describe Corrigan as a bubbly person and talented crafter who had friends all over the world. She knew the security detail officers who worked craft shows at the Neal Blaisdell Center and kept in touch with former hair salon clients. She was known for her gentle touch and massages sure to cure migraine headaches.
Born in Toledo, Ohio, she graduated from Bowling Green University in 1964 and migrated to Hawai'i, where she adopted the "aloha spirit" while the brother who shared her profession took on a New York one, he said. The two would do antique shows while keeping their sibling bickering intact, Marisay said.
"So polite. Everyone loved her. Delightful. It just irritated the hell out of me," he joked yesterday, before the somberness of her death hit him again. "It's hard for me because I get caught up with what actually happened."
Corrigan is survived by her daughter, Laura Brough, and two grandchildren with whom she lived in Hawai'i Kai, as well as another brother, Robert Marisay Jr. of Georgia.
Since the tragedy, Corrigan's 4-year-old grandson has begun calling his grandmother an angel.
"Georgine was a strong and loving mother, and we will miss her dearly," her daughter said in a statement. "I've had a very close relationship with her my entire life, and this will take a long time to heal. I know in my heart that during her final moments she was thinking of me and her two grandchildren, and that makes the pain a little more bearable."
Christine Snyder
Christine Snyder is gone, but her passion for life remains visible in trees across O'ahu, friends and colleagues say.
A certified arborist from Kailua, the 32-year-old was on board the same flight as Corrigan, the jetliner that crashed beside a Pennsylvania forest.
Snyder worked as a landscape and planting project manager for The Outdoor Circle, a nonprofit environmental group, and was highly respected in Hawai'i's tight-knit circle of tree professionals. She married Ian Pescaia just three months ago.
"She inspired a lot of people with her positive attitude and her persistence," said Stan Oka, Honolulu's urban forestry administrator. "She was a true advocate for trees, and she was very dedicated."
Snyder attended a national urban forestry conference in Washington last week with Outdoor Circle Chief Executive Officer Mary Steiner, and the two were returning to Honolulu via different routes.
"She was an absolutely wonderful person," said Steiner, who remained stranded in Toronto yesterday. "She was the best at what she did."
Honolulu Botanical Gardens Director Heidi Bornhorst said Snyder was a strong advocate for good city and park planning. One of the many local projects she worked on was the grove of coconut palms that was planted last year along the Diamond Head side of Magic Island, beside the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor.
"Of all people, she was such a spark," Bornhorst said. "Not only was she beautiful, but she was smart and committed."
She was also protective of O'ahu's trees and had publicly urged residents not to damage them with improper pruning or by swinging on the hanging roots of historic banyan trees, such as the one in Thomas Square.
"She had the right combination of respect and knowledge," said Steve Nimz, owner of The Tree People tree care service. "It was not just emotion. It was knowledge she was giving to other people."
Abner Undan, president of Trees of Hawai'i Inc., had worked closely with Snyder on many projects and said news of the plane crash had been devastating.
"I'm still in disbelief," he said. "I'm still hoping that somehow she missed that flight."
Honolulu landscape architect Lester Inouye said Snyder was very friendly and communicated easily with scientific-minded arborists and brawny tree trimmers alike.
"She was a natural, and she had a nice way with people," Inouye said. "I can't believe she's gone."
Heather Ho
As an ambitious pastry chef, Hawai'i native Heather Ho was usually among the first to arrive at the Word Trade Center's Windows on the World restaurant on the north tower's 107th floor.
Yesterday, her relatives and friends from New York to San Francisco to Honolulu prayed hard that for once in her life, Ho had skipped work Tuesday, or somehow escaped the terrorist attack that decimated the twin towers.
"We really hope she was able to evacuate early and get at least most of the way down. We hope she is in some kind of triage at one of the many hospitals," said Tim Quaintance, a sous chef at Boulevard in San Francisco, where Ho worked until earlier this summer.
Ho, 32, had just moved to New York after a three-year stint as much-admired pastry chef at Boulevard on the San Francisco waterfront.
When news of Tuesday's multiple terrorist attack hit the West Coast, Quaintance could think of only one thing: Where was Heather?
He called her home and talked to her boyfriend, a New Jersey native and musician who was a bartender at Boulevard and had moved to New York with Ho. But as of yesterday, her boyfriend still had not heard from her.
"He's still hopeful that she is OK," Quaintance said.
Ho was raised in Manoa and graduated in 1987 from Punahou School.
She is the daughter of Hawai'i business executive Stuart Ho and granddaughter of the late Honolulu financier and real estate developer Chinn Ho.
At Boston University, Ho majored in hotel and food management and quickly fell in love with the culinary arts.
After graduating from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park, N.Y., and completing an internship at San Francisco's Aqua, she landed jobs at prestigious Manhattan restaurants such as JoJo, Gramercy Tavern, Screening Room and Clementine.
When she was offered the position of pastry chef at Boulevard in 1998, she jumped at the opportunity to live near her mother in San Francisco.
Her name popped up regularly in local columns on hot new chefs, and she was widely admired for taking a fresh and creative approach to traditional recipes. Among other accolades, she was named San Francisco magazine's Dessert Chef of the Year.
But she couldn't shake the itch to return to the Big Apple.
"San Francisco was too slow for her," Quaintance said. "She had New York energy."
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Also among those unaccounted for is 1993 Kaiser High School graduate Maile R. Hale.
Hale, 26, of Hawai'i Kai, vice president of operations for a financial company in Boston, was attending a weeklong conference in one of the World Trade Center towers, family friend Wendie Wong said.
Hale's parents, Architects Hawai'i vice-chairman Rob Hale and Carol Hale, plan to fly to New York as soon as possible, Wong said.
"I don't think there's a gentler, kinder soul than Maile. This is just so tragic," said Diane Ueki, who has known Hale since she was a girl.
Hale was class valedictorian and a soccer player, and "her bad day would be (getting) an A-minus or B-plus," Ueki said. Hale also was a member of Kaiser High School's Amnesty International, the math team and the National Honor Society. She graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
"Maile was truly an exceptional young lady, intelligent, conscientious and ever so kind," Ueki said, sighing deeply. "She was just the kindest soul on earth. She truly, truly loved her family. Her family was really her life, you know. I cannot say enough about this young lady.
When Maile Hale was a little girl, her mother asked her what she wanted to be.
"She would say, 'I would just like to be a mom,' " Ueki said.
Vickie Kirihara, Hale's former advanced placement chemistry teacher at Kaiser, described Hale's talent in science and business as "phenomenal."
"She had great talents but she was a very soft person, very sweet and kind," Kirihara said. "You just had to love her. She just was a person that you would appreciate being around and enjoy. ... She was willing to share anything she knew with the other students."
Rich Y.C. Lee
Meanwhile, the familiy of Rich Y.C. Lee waited for word of his fate.
Lee, a vice president of Cantor Fitzgerald E-Speed, was working at the Internet company on the 103rd floor of one of the center's two towers when the attack occurred.
Lee, a 1986 graduate of Punahou School, called his wife, Karen, to tell her he was being evacuated.
Members of Lee's immediate family, who also live in New York, were going from hospital to hospital, hoping to find him.
The Associated Press and Advertiser staff writers Tanya Bricking, Johnny Brannon, Timothy Hurley, Yasmin Anwar and Lynda Arakawa contributed to this report.
