Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas and unborn child

Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas

Quick Facts

Significance:

Flight 93 Passenger

Date of Birth:

08/31/1963

Date of Death:

09/11/2001

Age: 38
Hometown: San Rafael, California
Occupation: Consultant and writer
Reason for travel: Returning from grandmother’s memorial service

On September 11, Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas was returning from her grandmother’s funeral in New Jersey to her home in San Rafael, California. Raised in Houston, the University of Texas graduate had 15 years of marketing and sales experience, and recently left her work as a consultant at Good Housekeeping magazine in order to write a book intended to inspire women to follow their dreams. She and her husband were expecting their first child. When she called her husband from on-board the plane, she left a message saying there was a problem on the flight. She conveyed her love for him and asked him to tell her family that she loved them, too. Grandcolas’ sisters were able to complete and publish her book, You Can Do It: The Merit Badge Handbook for Grown-Up Girls.

"Everything had meaning to her and purpose. You just didn’t do something. If you just did something, why do it? “Put some heart into it,” was her motto. You don’t always have to do it right, or it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it’s got to have some meaning, some heart to it. She had a big, big heart that way." ^[1]

 -Jack Grandcolas, husband

Left: Lauren and Jack. NPS/FLNI 9079  Right: Lauren (right) with family. NPS/FLNI 9077
 

"She was beautiful, but she had such a fun spirit. She really was interesting. She was an interesting person. Because she just did, she did things that not everybody did. I mean, she, she definitely, from early on in her life wanted to experience life. I think Lauren always knew that there was so much more to life than what was going on in her own home, or in her own backyard, or in her own community and she was always the adventurous one who ran after things. This evolved, this, this adventurous nature. It evolved as she got older into more realistic, mature, goals and, and interests. But she really, truly lived life to its fullest." ^[2]

-Vaughn Catuzzi Lohec, sister

"When Price Waterhouse was asked to come pitch the Joe Boxer account for their services, Lauren told these partners before they went into the meeting, that they all had to slip on this crazy-looking Joe Boxer underwear, boxer shorts, over their gray flannel suits. She says “If you go in there looking like gray flannel suits, you’re not going to win the account. This is going to win this guy over.” And sure enough, they’re let in and Nick bursted out laughing and said, “I don’t care what you guys have to say – you’re my, you’re my guys.” And he looked at Lauren and he said, “You put these guys up to it, didn’t you?” And, you know, she was smiling. He knew where that sparkle in the gray flannel would come from. It came from her. And it didn’t matter what they had to say; he said that that’s my - and that’s the kind of connection she knew how to make with people."^[3]  -Jack Grandcolas

  “I can’t imagine anything that you could put in there [the museum collection] that would make her more proud.” ^[4]  
-Jack Grandcolas  NPS / FLNI-00855

---

Footnotes

[1] Flight 93 National Memorial Oral History Collection/OH 12
[2] Flight 93 National Memorial Oral History Collection/OH 100
[3] Flight 93 National Memorial Oral History Collection/OH 12
[4] Jack Grandcolas, personal communication to curator, November 12, 2020.