Honoring Lisa A. Frost, Twenty-Five Years After September 11
The Lisa A. Frost Student Lounge carries the name of an alumna the School of Hospitality Administration lost on September 11, 2001.
On the second floor of 928 Commonwealth Avenue, students drop into the lounge chairs of the Lisa A. Frost Student Lounge between classes. Most of them were not yet born on the morning the room commemorates. Twenty-five years on, the School of Hospitality Administration (SHA) pauses to tell the story of the young woman whose name is on the door.
Lisa Anne Frost had been an alumna for barely four months when she boarded United Airlines Flight 175 in Boston on September 11, 2001. She was 22 years old. The aircraft was hijacked and flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. She was among the 2,977 people killed that day, and among the 28 Boston University alumni whose lives were taken.
Her story, told this month
Her father, Tom Frost, has spent twenty-five years keeping her memory in public view, through scholarships, through the marathons he runs in her name, and through the ceremonies where he speaks each September. This month he is again among the speakers at a public commemoration in Southern California marking the anniversary. Columnist Rich Archbold wrote about him and about Lisa in “Lisa Anne Frost lives on in father’s heart after 9-11 plane crash”, published September 6, 2026.
A student leader at SHA
Frost arrived on campus in the fall of 1997 from Rancho Santa Margarita, California, set on Boston University and, more specifically, on SHA. She pursued a dual degree, in hospitality administration at SHA and in advertising at the College of Communication (COM), while volunteering in the Office of Admissions, serving as copresident of the SHA student government, and interning at the Boston College Club. She graduated summa cum laude in May 2001 as valedictorian of her SHA class, and the University recognized her campus service with a Scarlet Key award.
That summer she planned to move to San Francisco with a friend she had known since the fourth grade and to begin a new job there. She flew west on September 11 to spend a few days with her family in California first. Her belongings reached San Francisco. She did not.
A room in her name
In January 2007, more than 70 of Frost’s friends, classmates, and family members gathered at SHA to dedicate the Lisa A. Frost Student Lounge, sponsored by her parents, Melanie and Tom Frost. Her chef coat and her watercolor paintings were on display, a reminder of how wide her interests ran. Speaking at the dedication, her father said, “Her spirit is very much here in Boston.”
Scholarships in her memory continue to support students at Boston University and at Trabuco Hills High School, her secondary school in California. Three thousand miles from the ceremonies in California, on the campus she chose and loved, a quiet room full of students keeps her name in the present tense.
The SHA community remembers Lisa A. Frost, and all those lost on September 11, 2001.
Related media coverage: “Honoring a Lost Leader,” BU Today, January 24, 2007