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Over the course of the last 25 years, the rhetoric concerning September 11, 2001, has been poignant and inspiring.
We remember the comments of the elected leaders who were thrust into the middle of the disaster:
“Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America” (President George W. Bush).
“The attacks of September 11th were intended to break our spirit. Instead, we have emerged stronger and more unified. We feel renewed devotion to the principles of political, economic and religious freedom, the rule of law and respect for human life. We are more determined than ever to live our lives in freedom” (Then NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani).
Then there are the reflections of those who lost loved ones on 9/11, as reported in Parade magazine:
“My older brother John lived [his life] in Technicolor. … When he walked in the door, the whole house lit up. And I’m sure heaven lit up when he got there, too.” (Anthoula Katsimatides at the World Trade Center site in 2005).
“My father, Norberto, was a pastry chef at Windows on the World in Tower One. For 10 years, he made many fancy and famous desserts, but the sweetest dessert he made was the marble cake he made for us at home… Whenever we parted, Poppi would say, ‘Te amo. Vaya con Dios.’ And this morning, I want to say the same thing to you, Poppi. I love you. Go with God.” (Catherine Hernandez at Ground Zero in 2008).
Still others, philosophers and activists, have added their thoughts:
“What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met” (Author David Levithan).
“When Americans lend a hand to one another, nothing is impossible. We’re not about what happened on 9/11. We’re about what happened on 9/12.” (Jeff Parness, founder of “New York Says Thank You”).
This 25th anniversary will no doubt add even more notable quotes and insights.
However, the single most powerful statement might have been uttered that first morning in the skies above Pennsylvania:
“All of us are going to die. But some of us are going to do something about it.”
Those were the words that 38-year-old Tom Burnett spoke to his wife Deena during their fourth and final phone conversation. He was a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93. Deena had told Tom that the twin towers of the World Trade Center had both been hit earlier that morning by hijacked commercial jetliners.
United 93 had also been commandeered by terrorists, who had executed a sharp mid-air turn that pointed the aircraft towards Washington, D.C. Their presumed target was now either the White House or the Capitol Building.
Burnett, who worked for a medical device corporation, joined three other men – Mark Bingham, Todd Beamer and Jeremy Glick – in formulating a plan. They would recruit other passengers to help them storm the cockpit and retake control of the aircraft.
If they failed, Beamer told Lisa Jefferson, a GTE airphone supervisor, they would at least guarantee that the hijackers couldn’t complete their mission.
One week after 9/11, Sports Illustrated feature writer Rick Reilly penned an homage to those four remarkable men, each of whom happened to have a sports background. As Reilly put it, they “didn’t much like being shoved around.”
Bingham, 31, “helped Cal win the 1991 and ’93 national collegiate rugby championships… Six-foot-five, rowdy and fearless, he once wrestled a gun from a mugger’s hand late at night on a San Francisco street.”
Burnett had been “the standout quarterback for Jefferson High in Bloomington, Minn., when the team went to the division championship game in 1980. That team rallied around Burnett every time it was in trouble.”
Glick, a 31-year-old businessman, 6’2″ and muscular, was “the 1993 collegiate judo champ in the 220-pound class from the University of Rochester (N.Y.), a national-caliber wrestler at Saddle River (N.J.) Day School and an all-state soccer player. ‘As long as I’ve known him,’ says his wife, Lyz, ‘he was the kind of man who never tried to be the hero — but always was.’”
Beamer, a 32-year-old sales account manager, had played mostly third base and shortstop in three seasons for Wheaton College in suburban Chicago. He was also a basketball player and soccer star.
Reilly writes, “The rugby player picked up an AirFone and called his mother, Alice Hoglan, in Sacramento to tell her he loved her. The judo champ called Lyz at her parents’ house in Windham, New York, to say goodbye to her and their 12-week-old daughter, Emmy.”
No one knows precisely what happened inside Flight 93. No one survived to tell the story. When authorities released the content of the plane’s voice data recorder, it revealed a brief but titanic struggle inside the cockpit. Within moments, the jet crashed onto an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania – less than a half hour of flying time from the nation’s capital.
Lisa Beamer – who was pregnant with their third child – said that learning of Todd’s heroics “made my life worth living again.”
Lyz Glick was also blessed with an experience of peace. “I think God had this larger purpose for him,” she said. “He was supposed to fly out the night before, but couldn’t. I had Emmy one month early, so Jeremy got to see her. You can’t tell me God isn’t at work there.”
Lyz ultimately transformed her husband’s heroics into Jeremy’s Heroes, a non-profit organization that has gifted thousands of young public-school athletes with the chance to train, something they otherwise could not have afforded.
“That’s helped us heal the most,” she reflects.
The week after the tragedy, President Bush invited the Flight 93 families to the White House. As they departed, they were being escorted out the rear access of the east wing.
Reilly writes, “They were surprised to turn a corner and see that 150 to 200 White House workers had lined up on either side of them. They were applauding. ‘The dishwashers, the cooks, the maids, the busboys,’ remembers Mark Bingham’s father. “They were clapping for us. They were thanking us. It just tore me up. And we were all crying and hugging each other. I’ll never forget it.”
All of us are going to die. But some of us are going to do something about it.
Tom Burnett and the others on Flight 93 knew they had just a few minutes.
But they also knew that in those few minutes they could make a difference.
Each of us is also going to die.
But between now and then, are we willing to do something about and something with the incredible gift of life that God has given to each one of us?
