Remembering 9/11 and Flight 93
Twenty-five years ago today, on a beautiful clear New Hampshire morning, I stood in the parking lot of the meat-packing plant where I worked as a junior cost accountant. A bomb threat had been called in that forced us to evacuate. So we gathered and talked, enjoying the sun on our faces and the reprieve from work, knowing as you inherently do in those moments that it’s all just a false alarm. Slowly, from a car radio or two we started to learn of the horror of 9/11.
Our building was cleared to reenter just as the first tower fell. We were sent home. I watched on my living room television as the second tower fell and confusion swirled about other planes still in the air.
Twenty-five years goes by in a blink. As I cast about today thinking about what to write, my mind went where it always does when I think about 9/11…first to the pain of the victims and their families, but then to the heroism of that day and the days that followed. There was heroism to be found in many places to be sure - crews that tried to fend off the attackers, first responders who went up staircases toward the fire, those stranded in the towers suppressing their own fears to help others, those who spent days digging for survivors, and countless smaller but not less meaningful acts that day and in the days that followed from ordinary people coming together in service to others. But ultimately, my mind always ends up going to Flight 93.
Flight 93 was the one that crashed into the field in Shanksville, PA, after its passengers and crew, once discovering that other planes had hit the WTC and Pentagon, decided to try to take back their plane. And in so doing, they spared either the US Capitol or the White House, the two greatest physical symbols of our Republic. The accounts we have from that plane from the transmissions and phone calls made from it are harrowing…the sounds of violence and suffering victims, the last goodbyes, passengers reciting the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 23 together, and the famous call to action “Let’s Roll.”
Many of us talk a big game about what we would do when faced with a life-or-death moment. Would we stand tall or would we shrink? And the truth is we don’t know. But we do know the choice the passengers and crew of Flight 93 made. They knew the plane was headed to Washington, DC. They knew it was going to be used in a suicide attack. They took a vote. And they stood tall. And their brave actions, though sadly unable to save their own lives, saved untold others. And in the process, they saved the very symbols of our Union and our Liberty.
Symbols matter. And to the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, today, the administration sent just the Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum.
Remembering matters. And we remember all victims of 9/11 today. But perhaps, we can do two other things to honor the heroes of Flight 93. First, we can emulate them by coming together on the most pressing task before us without care for the other relatively small differences we may have. Second, we can stop casting votes for men and women on both sides of the aisle who’ve demonstrated by character, action, or inaction that they don’t deserve to be in the building those heroes saved.
May God bless their memories and bring continued comfort to their loved ones today and every day.