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2002
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Peter, Sue Kim and daughter Christine Hanson were
on their way to visit the Kim family and go to Disneyland when they
boarded United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles on Sept. 11.
Christine at 2-1/2 was the
youngest victim on 9/11. Sue was awarded her PhD in Pathology after
her death, and Boston University has established and annual lecture to be
held on September 11 in honor of Sue Kim Hanson. Peter's parents, Eunice
and Lee Hanson, live in Easton, CT.
Peter Burton Hanson , 32, had
mastered the art of living through the Dead — the Grateful Dead, that is.
He believed that the group and its music would become classics, up there
with Beethoven, Bach and company, and he tried to sway the opinion of
anyone who would listen.
But that was Mr. Hanson: passionate about
his work and most things he pursued. When he took up gardening last spring
(2001), he did not plant just lilacs and roses outside his two-story white
colonial house in Groton, Mass. He planted trees as well: at least 30, his
mother, Eunice Hanson said.
Eight years ago, he married Sue Kim, a
Korean-American doctoral candidate in micro-biology immunology at Boston
University. She was a bit of a cut-up and enjoyed the Dead but she was not
enamored of the hippie lifestyle. "She was a scientist!" Mrs. Hanson
said.
The relationship spurred Peter Hanson to clip his tangle of
brownish-red dreadlocks, trade in tie-dyed T- shirts for suits, go to
business school and become one of the best software salesmen his friends
and family had ever met. He was Vice President of Marketing at TimeTrade
in Waltham, Massachusetts.
The couple had a daughter,
Christine , 2 1/2, who loved to work in the garden with
her father. "After they were all done planting, Christine would say to a
tree or plant: `I bet you are thirsty. Let me feed you and give you a
hug,' " Mrs. Hanson said.
For Sue Kim Hanson , 34,
a native of Los Angeles, her husband's family was the antidote to a
childhood spent longing for structure. She lived with her grandmother in
Korea until she was 6. Her mother died when she was 15. Her bond with the
Hansons was so strong that they accompanied her to California when she
went to inform her father about her engagement. She worried that her
father would protest because Peter Hanson was not Korean. But her family
embraced the Hansons.
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