List of victims includes retired law enforcement, dot-com founder, conservative commentator

By ROBERT TANNER
AP National Writer

The list, so far, is short and painful, and sure to grow longer: a pilot who treasured his faith, a TV producer, a conservative commentator whose husband is in the Bush administration, a retired law enforcement officer starting a new career as flight attendant.

The death toll on the ground still has barely been grasped. There were 266 aboard the four planes hijacked and used to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In the minutes before they died, several used their cellphones to talk to loved ones.

Peter Hansen of Massachusetts perished with his wife, Susan, and young daughter, Christine, aboard the second plane that crashed into the twin towers. "He called to his parents' home and so in that way they were so together in that moment," said the Rev. Bonnie Bardot in Easton, Conn., where Hansen grew up.

Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator and the wife of U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, twice called her husband and described details of the hijacking, including that the attackers used knifelike instruments, law enforcement officials said. They gave no other details.

"She called from the plane while it was being hijacked. I wish it wasn't so but it is," her husband said. Barbara Olson, a former congressional investigator and aide to Senate Minority Whip Don Nickles, later became a TV commentator and wrote a book critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In Alamogordo, N.M., local law enforcement remembered colleague Al Marchand, who retired in March and began a new career as a United flight attendant.

"He was very good people," said Capt. Mike Mirabal at the Alamogordo Department of Public Safety. "He was known to help people out. He had a lot of friends he left behind here."

About 600 people attended a memorial service in Greenland, N.H., for Tom McGuinness, co-pilot of the American Airlines flight which crashed into the north tower of World Trade Center.

"He was a faith-based man," said neighbor Chris Murphy, a member of McGuinness' church. "As my son gets older, if someone were to tell him he's a lot like Tom, I'd consider that a proud statement."

Others who perished aboard the four planes included David Angell, a producer of the NBC TV show "Frasier;" Daniel C. Lewin, co-founder of Akamai Technologies, a company that offers technology to speed the delivery of Internet information, and two officials with the Los Angeles Kings hockey team - Garnet "Ace" Bailey, 53, director of pro scouting, and Mark Bavis, an amateur scout.