Jet Crash Victims' Stories Start To Emerge

Loved Ones Describe Lives, Last Contacts

Lauren Grandcolas had taken a few days off from her sales job at Good Housekeeping magazine in San Francisco so she could attend her grandmother's funeral in New Jersey. Now, she was on her way home from Newark when her husband received the phone call.

"We have been hijacked," she told her husband, Jack, from United Airlines Flight 93. "They are being kind. I love you." Then she hung up.

Soon after, Grandcolas, in her mid-thirties and living in lovely Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge, became one of 266 people aboard four aircraft -- and a roster of hundreds if not thousands in Arlington and Manhattan -- who perished in yesterday's choreography of terrorism.

The victims included a 76-year-old Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Francis E. Grogan, who had been bound for a vacation with his younger sister in Ramona, Calif., before assuming a new position as the chaplain of a retirement home for Holy Cross brothers in Upstate New York.

And Garnet "Ace" Bailey, 53, a hockey player who had become director of scouting for the Los Angeles Kings. A member of two Stanley Cup-winning teams, he was returning to Los Angeles from Boston with one of his assistants in time for the opening of the team's training camp today.

And David Angell, the executive producer of the television show "Frasier," who was traveling on the American flight to Los Angeles with his wife, Lynn, on their way back from their summer home in Chatham, Mass.

And, presumably, John O'Neill, a 31-year FBI veteran and head of counterterrorism in the New York field office who retired last month and went to work as director of security at the World Trade Center.

Even as the identities of the first known victims slowly emerged during the day and into the night, yesterday was -- as much as anything -- a period of uncertainty over who the violence had claimed.

Officials at TJX of Framingham, Mass., which operates the TJ Maxx and Marshall's department stores, said that seven of its employees had tickets for the American Boston flight. Officials had no confirmation they were on the plane, but the chain closed its stores early yesterday and offered its workers counseling.

At a Hilton hotel next to Logan Airport, relatives arrived throughout the day at a relief center hastily set up by the Massachusetts Port Authority. It was staffed by counselors, members of the clergy and FBI agents, who interviewed families in individual rooms. Some families arrived at the hotel in search of an answer, others in search of solace. A Red Cross volunteer said one FBI agent inside, based in Boston, had told her he'd lost two friends who left yesterday morning -- one on the United flight, the other on the American flight -- and planned to meet in Los Angeles to treat themselves to a spa.

Other families worried in private. Sharif Chowdhury, of Lorton, and his wife were in tears yesterday, unable to reach their daughter, Shakila Yasmin, who worked on the World Trade Center's 97th floor, as they dialed her phone numbers at work and home and her cell phone 60 or 70 times.

"Every moment, we are calling to her. We are not getting any information," Chowdhury said of his 26-year-old daughter, who had moved to New York 1 1/2 years ago when she married a co-worker at Marsh USA, an insurance company with offices on the North Tower's upper floors.