Her Dad Called From the Hijacked Plane on 9/11, and What He Said About His Little Daughter Has Stayed With Their Family for 25 Years

At 8:52 a.m. on September 11, 2001, Lee Hanson answered a phone call from his son, Peter, who was aboard United Airlines Flight 175 with his wife, Sue, and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Christine.

Peter told his father that the plane had been hijacked. He said the cockpit appeared to have been taken over and asked Lee to contact United Airlines. Lee instead called the police in Easton, Connecticut, where he lived.

Peter called again at about 9 a.m. By then, he said passengers were getting sick and the plane was making sudden, jerky movements. He did not believe the pilot was still flying the aircraft.

The official 9/11 Commission report records what Peter told his father during those final minutes. He described a stewardess being stabbed, said the hijackers appeared to have knives and Mace and mentioned that they had claimed to have a bomb.

Then Peter tried to reassure his father.

“Don’t worry, Dad,” he said. “If it happens, it’ll be very fast.”

The call ended abruptly. Lee heard a woman scream, and soon afterward he turned on the television and saw Flight 175 strike the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m.

Peter, Sue and Christine were killed.

The family had been traveling from Boston to Los Angeles to visit Sue’s relatives before going to Disneyland. For Christine, who was two and a half, it was her first time on an airplane. The 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s account of the Hanson family records that Christine was the youngest of the eight children killed aboard the hijacked aircraft that day.

Away from the events of that morning, Christine’s life was much like that of any other toddler. She loved going to the playground and spent time in the garden with her father, Peter, who had planted trees, lilacs and roses around the family’s home in Groton, Massachusetts.

She had a stuffed Peter Rabbit too, a gift from her grandmother Eunice to mark her birth in the Chinese Year of the Rabbit. Christine liked putting stickers on the things she loved, and two Winnie-the-Pooh stickers were still attached to the rabbit when the family later gave it to the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

“She put stickers on everything she liked; I suppose it was her mark of approval,” Eunice said.

The museum also holds a photograph taken on Christine’s first birthday. She is dressed in traditional Korean clothing, and the frame around the picture carries the word “Peace.”

Her grandparents kept other memories that never appeared in photographs.

Lee once recalled visiting Peter, Sue and Christine at their home while Peter was working in the garden. Before leaving, Lee read a story to his granddaughter. When he finished, he told her, “You know, Christine, I love you.”

“I love you too, Papa,” she replied.

Lee then asked whether they were lucky that they had each other to love. Christine smiled, spread her arms and did a happy dance.

It was a small family moment, the sort that might have been remembered only by those who were there. After September 11, it became one of the memories Lee carried of his granddaughter.

Christine’s name is now engraved at the September 11 Memorial alongside the names of her parents.

Her story is inseparable from the terrible morning that took her life, but the memories her family preserved offer something beyond the final phone call. They show a two-and-a-half-year-old who had a favorite toy, covered it with stickers, followed her father into the garden and had already learned how to tell her grandfather that she loved him.

Those are the details that remain when the headlines and history books fall away, and a name on a memorial becomes a little girl her family knew and loved.