Grandcolas Looking to Start New Life Ten Years After Tragedy

Although he never expects closure, Jack Grandcolas told reporters that he’s ready to start a new life 10 years after his wife, Lauren, was killed in United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001.

The past ten years have been filled with depression and pain after the loss of his wife, who was three months pregnant. But now, he has a new love in his life.

Grandcolas met Corte Madera resident Sarah Hopkins at a friend’s party, he told the Marin Independent Journal. While the couple didn’t begin dating right away–Hopkins was getting over a relationship–their romance developed over dinner one night in downtown San Rafael.

Now, the couple lives in a new house and Hopkins wears a diamond ring fashioned from Lauren’s wedding band, which was left at a local jeweler before the tragedy.

“After Lauren died, the ring, like me, went into a dark place. It was just kept in its box in a safe deposit box in a dark place and now it’s out shining again,” he told CBS San Francisco.

Grandcolas can find reminders of Lauren in San Rafael and across the country. There is the small plaque known as “Lauren’s Place” on Fourth Street, a birthing room at Marin General Hospital, a memorial in Lauren’s home town of Houston, Texas and a museum honoring those who perished in Flight 93 in Shanksville, Penn.

Although Grancolas told the Press Democrat that he no longer goes to the Shanksville reunion, many who do remember the recording of Lauren’s voicemail sent to her husband while on that flight a decade ago.

On the message, Lauren told him that something happened and repeated that she loved him over and over. Grandcolas was asleep when the she called.

Margaret Pepe, a disaster response specialist for the American Red Cross, remembers listening to  that message while visiting Shanksville.

"It is impossible to describe. To be standing above the grave that contained her remains, to hear her voice - there was just such a strong emotional connection to the day it happened," Pepe told The Vancouver Sun.

Lauren was among 40 who died on the hijacked Boeing 757, bound for Washington, where the passengers rushed the cockpit in an attempt to retake the plane.

Following Lauren’s death and the death of their unborn child, Grandcolas suffering from depression. And though he never expects to get over Lauren’s death, he is happy now with Hopkins at his side.