H ouston’s Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas was described as “a can-do spirit” and “a sparkle in a gray suit world.” On her 30th birthday, she surprised her husband with plans to go skydiving; on her refrigerator, she hung a handwritten quote from “The Shawshank Redemption”: “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” Always on the hunt for a new challenge, she went deep-sea diving, mastered new recipes, took piano lessons and trained to become certified as an emergency medical technician. Her family joked that Nike must’ve had her in mind when it coined the slogan “Just do it!”
Her sash of Girl Scout badges hung in her office while she worked in marketing and advertising. Then she left her job to work on a merit badge handbook of her own, focused on helping “grown-up girls” keep growing, dreaming and making friends along the way.
At 38, she had finished the first chapter — “Dare to dream: The first step” — and was pregnant with her first child when she boarded Flight 93 on the way home to the Bay Area from a grandparent’s funeral.
The morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Flight 93 was the only hijacked plane that did not reach its intended target. According to a call made from the plane, passengers and crew held a vote on whether to rush the cockpit in an attempt to thwart the suicide mission. They did, and the plane veered off its course for Washington, D.C., instead crashing into a field in Pennsylvania. All 40 passengers and crew members were killed…