Husband Saw Fligth Disappear in Cyberspace

By Richard J. Dalton Jr | STAFF WRITER

September 13, 2001

When his wife left from Boston to Los Angeles, Dr. Stephen Holland watched the plane's flight path on the American Airlines' Web site, tracking the altitude, speed and even images of the plane turning on a map.

Stephen enjoyed tracking the flight paths of loved ones while they are traveling and noticed nothing unusual about the flight pattern. But, suddenly, the image disappeared.

"It had been taken down, and it said, 'Please contact American,'" Stephen Holland recalled in an interview with Newsday yesterday.

But Holland, 50, still wasn't unnerved. Then he turned to local Web site Boston.com, where he saw a message about a plane accident. Soon after, a colleague called him, notifying him that a plane from Boston to Los Angeles had crashed. "And I knew," he said.

Flight 11 had crashed into the World Trade Center's Tower One, killing 92 people aboard, including Holland's wife, 52-year-old Cora Hidalgo Holland, the daughter of Mexican immigrants. She spoke no English until she entered kindergarten.

Just five minutes before the flight departed, Holland had spoken to his wife on the cell phone he recently bought her. She mentioned she had a pleasant seatmate. Just weeks ago, the couple became empty nesters when their youngest son, Nate, 18, became a freshman at Fordham University.

"We were going to be alone together," Stephen Holland said. "We had a lot of plans. She was in the midst of planning the second half of her life."

Cora Holland leaves behind three children, Stephanie, 25; Jessica, 22, and Nate, 18; and two grandchildren, a 2-year-old and a 4-month-old.

Jessica Holland just graduated from NYU. She was in SoHo when she witnessed United Airlines Flight 175 crash into the World Trade Center's Tower Two. Nate was attending class uptown at the time.

The Hollands' 25th anniversary was to be Dec. 21. But they celebrated it early in Paris six weeks ago. "The joke was 'Did she want to spend another 25 years with me?' And I passed the test," he said.

Cora Holland was headed to Los Angeles to visit her family and show them pictures of the Paris vacation. Stephen Holland, who has family in Whittier, had planned to meet her there after traveling to Chicago.

Holland recalled Cora as a wonderful, wife, mother and grandmother. Until five years ago, she helped teach single mothers how to raise their children. "This woman was the center," he said. "She was the glue. This is what's called a life-altering event."