No greater love

Television worldwide is broadcasting the news of a terror attack on New York City.  The Pentagon is burning. And hijackers aboard Flight 93 are racing toward target number four.

It’s 9:57 a.m., and a counterattack has begun. 

Jeremy Glick has been talking to his wife, Lyz, for twenty minutes. Now he says, ‘Hold the line,’ ‘I’ll be right back.’ She can’t  bear to hear what happens next, so she hands the phone to her father, Richard Makely.

Richard Makely, Jeremy Glick's father-in-law:  There was no noise for several minutes. And then there was some screams, screams in the background, and so I said, “Well, they’re doing it...”

Lorne Lyles is still holding the phone too.

Lorne Lyles:  And then I hear commotion in the background, and then, you know, I didn’t know what to think.   Honestly, I didn’t know what to think had happened.  All I know is I got disconnected.  And I got disconnected with her screaming.

From the cockpit voice recording, officials believe passengers charged single-file up the narrow center aisle to the cockpit, using a food cart as a battering ram and a shield. New York Times Reporter Jere Longman describes the scene:

Jere Longman, New York Times reporter:  Well, from digital enhancement of the voice recorder, there’s the sound of plates and glassware crashing near the end of the flight.

Jane Pauley:  But one person would had to have been behind that cart.

Longman:  It took brave people - I mean, can you imagine if you were that first person in line rushing forward, and the curtain was closed in first class, and you had no idea what you would be encountering when you pulled that curtain back?  It took a brave person to do that.

On the cockpit tape, a hijacker can be heard shouting to hold the door...while a male American voice on the outside shouts, “Let’s get them.”

Longman:  At one point you can hear, you know, ‘In the cockpit, in the cockpit.’  And then someone says something that’s unintelligible and kind of garbled, but it’s the sense that if we don’t do that, then, “we’ll die.”

Witnesses in rural Pennsylvania see the plane flying at very low altitude, but at very high speed.

Pauley:  Is there a sense at this point that the hijackers know that the flight is going to end prematurely?

Longman:  They’re obviously threatened, and feel threatened.  And at one point, one of the hijackers suggests shutting off the oxygen supply to the cabin. As I understand it, it’s a very difficult or impossible thing to do, and it wouldn’t have any effect on the breathing of the passengers, because they were below 10,000 feet.

Witnesses see the plane making erratic wing maneuvers, rocking back and forth. The 9/11 Commission concluded the hijackers were deliberately trying to waggle the wings, knocking the passengers around like bowling pins to keep them from getting forward.

Longman:  During this part the hijackers are also praying—

Pauley:  What is the nature of their praying?

Longman: -- Saying, sort of, god - “Allah o Akbar,” god is great.

Hijacker Ziad Jarrah could be heard on the cockpit tape asking if he should just ‘finish it off’ as the counterattack began; one of his cohorts told him to wait.

The 9/11 Commission Report says that at 10:02 a.m., Jarrah, turns the control wheel hard to the right as the airplane heads down.

Longman:  In the final moments of this struggle, according to the families who heard the tape, voices that seemed muffled and distant all of a sudden became clearer. They took that as some corroboration that the passengers actually are in,  perhaps crew,  actually did reach the cockpit.

Pauley:  Do you mean, reach it?  Breach it?

Longman:  Get inside.

The end comes at 10:03 a.m.—in the loose, porous soil of a deserted strip mine in coal country near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Lee Purbaugh, a Pennsylvania steel worker, watches the plane going down. 

Lee Purbaugh, eyewitness: I heard this loud noise, and I happened to look up.  And this jet come right straight over my head.  And it went real low.  And it probably crashed down, it went nose to tail.

All morning, Lisa Beamer had kept a vigil by her television, like the wife of a missing seafarer might once have scanned the horizon from a widow’s walk.

Lisa Beamer, Todd Beamer's wife:  When I heard them say that was the United flight from Newark to San Francisco that just went down.  And I said, ‘That’s his flight.’  And my friend said, ‘No, he might be on a different one.  He might not have made it on the plane.’  I said, ‘No, I know that was his flight.’

Deena Burnett: There was a policeman at my house that they had sent over to stay with me, and he saw it first. And he turned around and he said, “I think I have bad news for you.” And when he said that, I ran to the television and I said, is ‘This Tom’s flight?’ He said yes. And I was still holding to the telephone. (crying) I held on to the telephone for three hours, until the battery went down.

Tom Burnett left three daughters; the oldest, twins, were only five at the time.

Deena Burnett:  I sat them on the bed and I told them that dad was not coming home. And Madison asked if she could call him on his cell phone.  And I told her no, that he didn’t have a cell phone in heaven.

At least 20 children lost a parent that day.  Claudette Greene, now a widow with two children, took her inspiration from Jackie Kennedy.

Claudette Greene:  I remember thinking, “How does she do that?” Because I had been to funerals of people weeping and sobbing and falling apart.  And I was so impressed with her and the dignity she had.  And it hit me that night: it’s because she had children. She was there for them. And I have thought about her every day since.

In an instant, Flight 93 became a legend. On a day when America was caught unaware, 40 ordinary men and women gave us hope that any one of us would have done what they did.

In the years since, we’ve learned how much bigger this disaster could have been.

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