ECHOES OF EXCEPTIONALISM: The Heroes of Flight 93

On the morning of September 11, 2001, United Flight 93 climbed through clear late-summer skies, leveling off at 35,000 feet. The air was smooth. The horizon was sharp. From their windows, the passengers could see the blue sky stretching unbroken toward Pennsylvania and the Appalachians beyond.

Forty-six minutes after takeoff, as the aircraft crossed eastern Ohio, the calm broke. At 9:28 a.m. the cockpit erupted in shouts and breaking sounds. The plane suddenly dropped 685 feet, slamming the drink cart into a seat, coffee splashing across the aisle.

The plane leveled and a voice came over the air traffic control frequency—the voice of a hijacker, an al-Qaeda terrorist: “Sit down. We have a bomb on board.” Al-Qaeda’s method was mass murder. The terrorists had burst through the flimsy cockpit door, overpowering the crew and taking control of the plane.

The aircraft began a wide, banking turn, swinging southeast and straying from its planned path to San Francisco. The passengers could feel the shift in their stomachs as the nose dipped slightly and the engines surged, bringing the plane out of its turn pointed toward Washington, D.C., more than 300 miles away. Had they held that course unopposed, more death and destruction surely awaited Americans living and working in the capital.

In that moment, the cabin of Flight 93 became something else—a weapon the hijackers meant to use to write their hatred of America in the blood of innocent men, women, and children.

But as the hijackers tightened their grip on the cockpit, something else was happening in the cabin. The passengers, still absorbing the shock of events, began reaching for the tools available to them—their phones. Airfones in seatbacks lit up. Cell signals flickered in and out as the aircraft crossed into western Pennsylvania. One call connected, then another, and another.

Passengers learned two planes had struck the World Trade Center, and another had hit the Pentagon. As the seconds passed and the realization of what was happening became clear, they were forced to decide how they would spend what would likely be their last half-hour.

Thirty-one-year-old Jeremy Glick called his wife, Lyz. The couple’s daughter Emerson, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, was less than three months old.

Glick told his wife that he loved her and knew she would give their daughter the life she deserved. Then the national collegiate judo champion told her they were considering rushing the hijackers. His voice was calm, steady, reassuring, and purposeful.

Thirty-one-year-old Mark Bingham called his mother, Alice Hoagland. The public relations executive and former rugby player said, “Mom, this is Mark. I love you.”

Tom Burnett, 38 and a senior executive at Thoratec Corporation, called his wife Deena. The father of three young daughters told her, “We’re going to do something. I love you. Don’t worry. We’re going to do something.”

Lauren Grandcolas, 38, called her husband Jack. She was pregnant with their first child. He did not pick up. She left a message: “Jack, pick up sweetie, can you hear me? Okay. I just want to tell you; there’s a little problem with the plane. I’m fine. I’m totally fine. I just want to tell you how much I love you.”

Thirty-two-year-old sales manager Todd Beamer couldn’t reach his wife. His call was routed to Lisa Jefferson, a GTE Airfone supervisor in Illinois. Beamer and his wife Lisa were expecting their third child. Beamer asked the operator to pray with him and together they recited the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm. “If I don’t make it, please call my family and tell them how much I love them,” he said.

Beamer and Jefferson finished reading the 23rd Psalm at 9:55 a.m. eastern time on September 11, 2001. The hijackers had taken control of the plane 27 minutes earlier. The aircraft was still 20 minutes from Washington. American Airlines Flight 11 had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center 69 minutes earlier. United Airlines Flight 175 had struck the South Tower 52 minutes earlier. In four minutes, the South Tower would collapse at 9:59 a.m. In 33 minutes, the North Tower would collapse.

As Beamer’s phone connection with Jefferson was still live and at the close of the 23rd Psalm, Beamer turned to his fellow passengers and said: “Are you ready? Okay… let’s roll.”

As Beamer and his fellow passengers surged forward, fighting to regain control of the aircraft, others were on the ground fighting for their lives and risking themselves to save others. In New York, firefighters climbed the stairwells of the North Tower and the South Tower, ascending into heat and smoke while thousands of office workers descended past them. Police officers and Port Authority personnel moved floor to floor, urging people to keep going, refusing to leave until the last person they could reach was moving toward safety.

In the South Tower, Rick Rescorla—a Vietnam veteran and vice president of security for Morgan Stanley—was beginning another trip of many up the stairs to bring others to safety. He was never seen again.

In the Pentagon, military personnel and civilians were pulling colleagues from flames and debris, forming human chains in the darkness of the impact zone.

Everywhere that morning, Americans were struggling—not for domination, not for ideology, but for one another.

In the skies over Pennsylvania, the passengers of Flight 93 joined that struggle. Twenty-seven minutes after the hijackers seized the cockpit, Todd Beamer asked the men and women gathered in the aisle if they were ready. Twenty minutes from the capital, he said the words that carried the moral weight of the day: “Okay… let’s roll.”

What followed was a battle in the skies over Pennsylvania—bodies thrown by violent turns of the plane, shouts, impacts against the cockpit door, the hijackers panicking as passengers refused to surrender and refused to allow their deaths to be used against their fellow citizens.

At 10:03 a.m. eastern time on September 11, 2001, Flight 93 exploded on impact in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. When it did, it was about 18 minutes of flight time from the Capitol dome, likely the plane’s intended target.

The hijackers desired to write a narrative of hate and destruction. They failed. Seventeen years after Jeremy Glick and those on Flight 93 died to protect strangers—after he whispered reassurances to his wife and charged the cockpit—his daughter Emerson stepped onto a national stage at the age of 17 in 2018, cast in the first national tour of Bartlett Sher’s Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof. She continues to perform today.

The men who seized the cockpit believed that violence was the most powerful form of expression. But Emerson Glick, the baby who was eighty-five days old when her father died, grew into a woman whose vocation is beauty. Her father died protecting strangers. She lives creating art for them.

Hatred tried to write itself in blood. But love and beauty are writing the final chapter.