Let's Roll

 

 

 

 

I really feel like our experience at the Flight 93 memorial needed a page of its own. This past year as we commemorated the 20th year anniversary of 9/11 I came across a post detailing the phone conversation of a man named Todd Beamer who was on board Flight 93 that fateful day. I was struck by the dialogue that ensued as Todd spoke with the Airfone operator asking her to call his family and tell his pregnant wife and two sons that he loved them. He told her about the passengers and flight attendants’ plan to pour boiling water on the hijackers and fight for their lives one last time and then he asked her to pray with him. I don’t ever remember hearing this account before. I don’t ever really remember focusing on the Flight 93 portion of 9/11’s tragedy. But this year I did, and I was shocked when I learned that the crash site was less than 90 minutes away from our new home in Pittsburgh. So as I talked about this with mom prior to her trip out for her birthday we decided to add it to our itinerary of things to do and budget in time to drive out and see the memorial at the site of the crash.

September 11, 2001 was just before my fourth birthday so I was really young and don’t have any memories from when it happened. My mom had just had Bridger and has told me in the years since that it was a really tricky event to tell us about as kids because dad traveled so much. There was a time growing up when he was on airplanes traveling for a week out of every month. My parents had to tread a delicate line of sharing with us what had happened on that day while trying to keep us safe from experiencing paralyzing worry and fear every time my dad traveled since it was so frequent. Now that we’re older my mom has told us about the first flight my dad took after 9/11 and how ominous it all felt.

Now here I am at almost 24 years old beginning to more completely understand and grieve over what happened that day. The 40 passengers and crew members on that flight, most specifically Todd Beamer and what came to be his parting and impactful last words “Let’s roll,” continue to impact and influence the lives of generations and I can confidently say I am one of them.

So all that being said let’s take a walk through my experience at the memorial. I didn’t do a lot of research into the memorial other than mapping out the location and reading about a tower of voices, a wall of names near the crash site and a section of ground marked holy where only family members of passengers and crew are able to go. Other than that I really wasn’t expecting more than that. I thought we’d drive an hour and twenty minutes, spend twenty to thirty minutes on the site and turn around and find an apple orchard on the way back. I was not expecting to drive through miles of beautiful changing leaves leading to a fenced off area and a detour to a new entrance to the memorial where we found winding roads through over one hundred acres of rolling hills shrouded by drizzly rainclouds adding to the somber, solemn mood.

We passed by the Tower of Voices wind chimes after seeing signs pointing to a visitors center. I did not realize how huge and how packed with people that visitor center would be. It was a large building set on top of a hill on the “flight path” the plane took as it plummeted toward the ground and ultimately crashed in the field below. The visitors center was reminiscent of the design and setup of the Ground Zero memorial in the way it guided visitors through the day of 9/11 incorporating the schedule of Flight 93 within the other tragedies of the day. 

I snapped one picture inside before seeing a sign that requested visitors refrain from taking pictures. Mom and I talked about how that request not only helped the lines move more fluidly but also helped you focus on the events and the present taking it in more completely with reverence rather than the desire or ability to document it yourself. The documentation was done prior and you as a visitor were only responsible for taking it in. I think the picture I was able to capture before seeing the sign is significant in its simplicity. It is a quote on the first wall of information that simply states, “It was a beautiful September morning with a blue sky… just a normal day.” 

 

 

What began as a normal day quickly turned into a tragic day that changed the world. As we weaved through the aisles of information we read about the events of that day. We watched news reels of reports of the attacks on the Twin Towers, we read about the hijackers plans and viewed a play by play of what happened on Flight 93 as four men in first class attacked the crew and took over the plane turning it around and headed for Washington D.C. I thought it was significant to read that the hijackers chose planes with the most fuel (planes were headed to destinations in California) and fewest passengers. The most fuel would ensure they’d have fuel to turn around and make the biggest impact, the fewest passengers would prevent acts of resistance, or so they thought…

The most poignant section was when we stood facing a wall with a speaker you lifted from the wall and held up to your ear to listen to passenger and flight attendant voicemails left on family members’ answering machines. You couldn’t help but sob as you listened to these people muster the bravery to remain calm as they spoke and communicated to their loved ones what was happening. And then you sobbed harder when you noticed that in all three messages every single one started choking up and their voices broke as they start talking about how much they loved their family who would be the ones that would find and listen to these messages. Mom and I shared a speaker and both listened to these heart wrenching messages with tears pouring down our faces and collecting into our masks. It was completely heart breaking to think about the complete fear and shock those people must have experienced as they learned their plane was hijacked and the hijacking was part of a terrorist attack.

And that to me is the most miraculous part of all is that each of those people, who most would consider to be ordinary passengers and flight attendants channelled that complete fear and shock and decided to rise up together and fight for their lives and protect the lives of countless individuals. So they fought back and as they did so the hijackers rocked the plane throwing the heroes around the aircraft cabin in an attempt to stop them from rising up and preventing their horrific attack. And somehow during all of that those 40 people (the fewest passengers) caused the hijackers to abandon their mission and take the plane down in a suicide crash. It didn’t matter that there were only 40 people on board, those 40 people united in bravery and desire to protect likely saved hundreds of lives by giving their own.

At the end of the aisles there is a glass case with a collection of letters, gifts and tributes that were laid near the crash site during the days and months after 9/11. One child’s handwritten note and another man’s scrawled writing on a hotel note pad hit my heart specifically and I think pay tribute to these heroes’ sacrifices best… The child’s note if I remember correctly simply said, “Thank you for saving the White House and America, you saved many people, were you scared?” The man’s note said something like, “I was in Washington D.C. staying on the upper floors of a hotel across from the White House, the way I see it you saved my life that day. Thank you for saving my life, I won’t waste it. I promise.”

With those words in mind we exited the visitors center onto a large balcony overlooking the steep decline the plane would have taken before crashing in a blaze, essentially vaporizing in the speed and heat of impact. The words etched on the glass of that balcony were as poignant as the initial words inside the building, “A common field one day. A field of honor forever.”
 

 

 

Leaving the balcony, we walked back to the car to drive down to the lower lot were you could walk up to the walls surrounding a solitary limestone boulder that marks the crash site where those 40 heroes lost their lives. 

 

People continue to leave tributes at the site. Flowers, flags, a purple What Would Jesus Do bracelet that matched mom’s, and painted rocks with bible verses were laid along the walls and next to the 40 names. John 15:13 brought it all together as to why this event resonates so deeply with people. It is a reminder of the Christlike heroism these people showed, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” What the passengers and crew of Flight 93 did was one of the most Christlike things a person can do, lay down their life for someone else. 

 

 

And that’s what you’re left to ponder as you leave those grounds. You’re left to hope and pray that if you were in that situation you would have been a hero. You hope you would have been a fighter and been one of those brave ones that left tearful goodbyes to their families and then wouldn’t back down without a fight.

I won’t ever forget discussing this with mom and hearing her tearfully say to me, “You know I’ve thought a lot about what if dad had been on one of those flights and I know he would have been one that fought back.” I couldn’t agree more, my dad is one of the bravest and toughest men I’ve ever met and I have no doubt he would have stood by Todd Beamer and said “let’s roll.” And I hope that I would have done and would do the same.

Without taking away from the magnitude of the situation I do want to say that I don’t think it has to take a life threatening situation in order to be a hero and stand together to fight against evil. I think there are ways in all of our lives and situations that we can be like Todd Beamer and unite with our brothers and sisters and make decisions to fight back against evil no matter the sacrifice. I think that’s what allows their legacy to live on is if we learn from them and are inspired enough to act and follow their Christlike examples. I think we can each individually find ways to apply what we learn from these heroes in small ways. Maybe we won’t save hundreds like they did maybe it will just be one. But we know that to Christ the one is just as important as the 99.

I hope that just as the voices of those passengers and crew members live on through the messages, histories, memorials and wind chimes that they can also live on through their impact on us. We can all consider ourselves survivors of that day… and like that written note from the man in D.C. I don’t want to waste my life either.

 

So in the words of Todd M. Beamer,

“Are you guys ready?

Let’s roll.”