We Will Never Forget

I will always remember what I was doing on the morning of September 11, 2001 as will most everyone else who considers America their home.  The horror that played out in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington DC is indelibly etched on all our minds and is freshened every year on this date. 

I'm not going to write a sad post about September 11 and remembering our fallen, I celebrate the courage and bravery of those who acted to save and give you the words for Brad Meltzer.

Brad Meltzer

Every 9/11, I think of our neighbor, Michele Heidenberger, a flight attendant on the plane that hit the Pentagon. Today, here's why I also owe the heroes of United flight 93:
We owe these forty men and women. We owe them personally.
“They’re talking about crashing this plane into the ground. We have to do something,” Thomas Burnett Jr. told his wife, Deena, on his cell phone. “I’m putting a plan together.”
“Who’s helping you?” his wife asked.
“Different people. several people. there’s a group of us. Don’t worry. I’ll call you back,” he replied....
Flight attendant Sandra Bradshaw called her husband and said that she was boiling water as a weapon. Her final words: “everyone’s running to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.”
“Let’s roll,” Todd Beamer famously added as they rushed to the front of the plane, likely using a beverage cart as a battering ram to break into the locked cockpit.
Thanks to their bravery, their Boeing 757 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, never reaching the terrorists’ real target.
It was approximately twenty minutes from Washington, D.C., where the plane would’ve struck either the White House or, more likely, the U.S. Capitol.
That’s right.
The U.S. Capitol—where my wife worked. That morning, on September 11, 2001, she was eight months pregnant and was driving to work at the Capitol.
Every passenger—and all the terrorists—lost their lives in the crash. But their bravery saved so many others.
We will owe these men and women forever.

"Don’t worry, we’re going to do something."
—Thomas Burnett Jr., on the phone with his wife, Deena

 

Thank you all for your sacrifice and thank you first responders and volunteers who tirelessly worked to find even one survivor.  Thank you America for standing up for your beliefs.  I stand beside you with pride an awe at your actions.  God bless us all.