91697

Going Yuppie for Love

Peter Burton Hanson, 32, had mastered the art of living through the Dead — the Grateful Dead, that is. He believed that the group and its music would become classics, up there with Beethoven, Bach and company, and he tried to sway the opinion of anyone who would listen.

But that was Mr. Hanson: passionate about his work and most things he pursued. When he took up gardening last spring, he did not plant just lilacs and roses outside his two-story white colonial house in Groton, Mass. He planted trees as well: at least 30, his mother, Eunice Hanson said.

Eight years ago, he married Sue Kim, a Korean-American doctoral candidate in micro-biology immunology at Boston University. She was a bit of a cut-up and enjoyed the Dead but she was not enamored of the hippie lifestyle. "She was a scientist!" Mrs. Hanson said.

The relationship spurred Peter Hanson to clip his tangle of brownish-red dreadlocks, trade in tie-dyed T- shirts for suits, go to business school and become one of the best software salesmen his friends and family had ever met. He was vice president of marketing at TimeTrade in Waltham, Mass.

The couple had a daughter, Christine, 2 1/2, who loved to work in the garden with her father. "After they were all done planting, Christine would say to a tree or plant: `I bet you are thirsty. Let me feed you and give you a hug,' " Mrs. Hanson said.

For Sue Kim Hanson, 34, a native of Los Angeles, her husband's family was the antidote to a childhood spent longing for structure. She lived with her grandmother in Korea until she was 6. Her mother died when she was 15. Her bond with the Hansons was so strong that they accompanied her to California when she went to inform her father about her engagement. She worried that her father would protest because Peter Hanson was not Korean. But her family embraced the Hansons.

Peter, Sue Kim and Christine Hanson were on their way to visit the Kim family when they boarded United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles on Sept. 11.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on February 10, 2002.


Hanson, Peter Burton, Hanson, Sue Kim, Hanson, Christine Lee. Presumed dead in the crash of an airliner into the World Trade Center Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. Peter was vice president of sales for TimeTrade in Waltham, Mass. He was a graduate of Joel Barlow High School and North-eastern University. He earned an MBA at Boston University. Sue graduated from the Uni-versity of California at Berkeley. She earned a master of arts de-gree at Boston University and was a doctoral candidate there. Christine attended Knowledge Beginnings in Chelmsford, Mass. They are survived by Sue's grandmother, Ok-Hee Kim of California; her brothers, Stanley and John of California; by Peter's parents, Eunice and Lee Hanson of Easton, and by Kathryn and Mark Barrere of Southbury, Peter's sister and brother-in-law. Services will be held at the Congregational Church of Easton at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 15, in Boston at Marsh Chapel of Boston University Monday, Sept. 17 at 2 p.m and in Los Angeles at Hankook Mortuary, Wednesday, Sept. 19 at 7:30 p.m. Donations in lieu of flowers may be given to the Christine Lee Memorial Fund at the Con-gregational Church of Easton, P.O. Box 37, Easton, CT 06612.