newjerseynewsroom.com

Four who perished had Rutgers bond

BY MARY JO PATTERSON

When United Airlines Flight 93 slammed into a Pennsylvania hillside on September 11, 2001, 35 minutes after terrorists took control of the plane, four Rutgers graduates were among the innocent people on board who perished. On September 10 of this year, nearly a decade later, federal officials dedicated the first phase of the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a tribute to the 40 passengers and crew who fought back and prevented the hijackers from flying into their intended target in Washington, D.C.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day, after three hijacked jetliners struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the fourth crashed in Shanksville. Rutgers lost a total of 37 alumni.

Three national monuments were created to honor the dead, but only two have been fully funded. The foundations that built the memorials in New York and Arlington, Virginia, met their fundraising goals by 2008, but the Pennsylvania memorial is still $10 million short. Although $52 million has been raised from private, state and federal sources, fundraisers for the Flight 93 National Memorial Campaign at the National Park Foundation say the memorial cannot be completed as designed without an additional $10 million from private donors.

Catherine Price, whose mother, Jean Peterson, 55, and stepfather, Don Peterson GSM’67, 66, were on Flight 93, believes the site’s rural location – far from corporate donors—and the fact that the plane crashed on private land complicated the task. The park service did not complete acquisition of its 2,200 acres in southwestern Pennsylvania until 2009. But Price said she was overwhelmed by the response she got when she organized a charity run for the cause. Last Memorial Day she raised $14,802 in the Spring Lake Five Mile Run, six times her goal.

“We were blown away by the amount of people who wanted to support our team,” said Price, 30, a social worker in Hoboken.

The Petersons, who lived in Spring Lake and often distributed water to runners during the annual run, were retired and traveling to Yosemite National Park on September 11, 2001. They boarded Flight 93, bound for San Francisco, in Newark. The other alumni on the doomed plane were Patrick Joseph Driscoll GSNB’75, 70, of Manalapan, a retired communications executive also heading for Yosemite; Colleen Fraser LC’74, 51, of Elizabeth, an advocate for the disabled on her way to a grant-writing seminar; and Richard Guadagno CC’84, 38, formerly of Ewing, manager of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge in northern California. He was flying home from a 100th birthday party for his grandmother in Trenton.