Youngest 9/11 victim remembered by loved ones as her dad’s heartbreaking final call from the plane is shared
Christine Lee Hanson was just two and a half years old when she boarded United Airlines Flight 175 with her parents, Peter and Sue Kim Hanson.
She was on her way to what should have been an exciting family holiday.
The family joined a flight from Boston to Los Angeles as they planned to visit relatives, followed by a trip to Disneyland.
It was Christine’s first time on an aeroplane.
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Instead, the little girl tragically became the youngest person killed in the September 11 attacks.
Now, 25 years after the horrifying events of that day, memories of Christine are being revisited.
The final telephone calls made from Flight 175 have been shared, including the desperate conversation between her father and grandfather as the hijacked aircraft headed towards New York.
'If it happens, it will be very fast'
At 8.52am on September 11, 2001, Peter Hanson called his father, Lee, from the plane.
“Dad, we’ve been hijacked,” he told him, according to a transcript on Substack, memorialising the calls.
Peter explained that the cockpit appeared to have been taken over, an attendant had been stabbed and the aircraft was moving strangely.
He asked his father to contact United Airlines and tell them it was Flight 175, travelling from Boston to Los Angeles.
Lee instead contacted police in Easton, Connecticut, passing on the warning.
At about 9am, Peter called his father again.
According to the 9/11 Commission's account, he said the passengers were becoming sick, the plane was making jerky movements and he believed the pilot was no longer flying.
He also feared the hijackers intended to crash the aircraft into a building.
“Don’t worry, Dad,” Peter said. “If it happens, it will be very fast.”
The call ended with Peter repeatedly saying, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God”, before a woman screamed and the line went dead.
Moments later, Lee and his wife Eunice watched on television as Flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9.03am.
Peter, Sue and Christine were among the 2,997 people killed on that fateful day.
For Christine’s family, however, the toddler’s life has never been defined only by the circumstances of her death.
The National September 11 Memorial & Museum described her as a 'bright and busy toddler' who enjoyed playground trips and helping her father in the garden.
She was particularly attached to a stuffed Peter Rabbit given to her by her grandmother, Eunice, after Christine was born in the Chinese Year of the Rabbit.
Christine covered things she loved with stickers.
Two Winnie-the-Pooh stickers remained on her Peter Rabbit toy, which her grandparents eventually donated to the 9/11 Memorial Museum.
“She put stickers on everything she liked; I suppose it was her mark of approval,” Eunice said.
A photograph of Christine on her first birthday is also part of the family’s collection at the museum.
She is pictured wearing traditional Korean clothing, with the word ‘Peace’ carved into the frame.
For Eunice, that word held particular meaning.
'I couldn’t talk about it'
“The Peace frame containing Christine’s picture... is most poignant,” she said. “That one word describes Christine’s parents, who were loving people and believed in kindness.”
Lee once recalled telling Christine that he loved her during a final visit. She replied: “I love you too, Papa.”
He then asked: “Aren’t we lucky that we have each other to love?”
Christine responded with a happy dance, spreading out her arms.
According to Eunice, the family were initially meant to travel on 10 September, however, they had to reschedule their flight at the last-minute as Peter had a work conflict.
“That killed me,” she previously told NBC. “For over a year, I couldn’t talk about it.”
On the memorial, the names of Peter, Sue and Christine Hanson appear together, forever remembered as a loving family.
Jen Thomas