The Office of University and Alumni Relations is still working to compile a complete list of all Georgetown Alumni missing or killed in the Sept. 11 attacks against the Pentagon and World Trade Center. According a to Georgetown website for alumni, the missing include at least eight alumni, one professor and several parents and siblings of current students.
According to Julie Green Bataille, Assistant Vice President for Communications, a list of alumni killed in the attacks will be posted on the website once information is confirmed. Green Bataille said she had no time frame for the release of the information.
Green Bataille said OAUR employees are checking information through families, other alumni, company websites and other official websites.
OAUR is looking into how to best plan memorial services, though Bataille said no plans have been finalized.
Vanessa Kolpak (CAS ‘01) is Georgetown’s most recent graduate to be reported missing after the attacks. Kolpak was working in the south tower of the World Trade Center for investment banking firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.
Kolpak is one of 67 Keefe, Bruyette & Woods employees who remain missing.
Kolpak, one of three children, was living with her sister Alexis in New York after beginning work three weeks before the attacks.
The Kolpak family last heard from Vanessa after the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. Kolpak called her mother just after the first impact to let her know she was okay.
Kolpak graduated from Georgetown in May magna cum laude with a degree in philosophy and a minor in economics. She grew up in Lincolnwood, Ill. and graduated from St. Ignatius College Prep.
“She was a good-hearted person,” her older brother Todd Kolpak said. “She was always a kind of politician; she used to say she wanted to be president. I believe she could have made it.”
While a Georgetown student, Kolpak was a peer educator for three years and studied abroad in Prague, Czech Republic the fall semester of her junior year.
Carol Day, director of Health Education said Kolpak was vibrant, intelligent, reliable and responsible.
“She loved living life,” Day said. “She just enjoyed life to the hilt and had a lot of close friends.”
Mitch Kaneda, the Associate Dean of the School of Foreign Service remembered Kolpak from his class by her big smile and outgoing personality.
“She went to the beach with her classmates before graduation, and before she went, she told me how much she was looking forward to spending the last few days of college with her friends. I think that was my last conversation with Vanessa,” Kaneda said. “It tears my heart to learn that she is still in the ruins of the World Trade Center.”
