United Flight 93’s passengers and crew were the best of us on 9/11

Twenty years ago this morning, we woke up to two collapsed and smouldering towers where 2,606 American and foreign national citizens, firefighters, police officers and rescue workers lay entombed in the wreckage. Among the rubble at the Pentagon lay 125 military and civilian personnel who were killed in that terrorist attack. And at Shanksville, Pa., the 40 passengers and crew of United Flight 93 who fought back against the four suicide terrorists were in a crater 30 feet deep after their plane had slammed into the ground at 575 miles per hour.

The passengers and crew of Flight 93 were a representation of America’s melting pot. They were white, Black, Asian, single, married, old, young, middle-aged, gay, straight, male, female, students, retirees, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, born again Christians and agnostics.

They were also very family- and community-oriented, and among other things were involved with charities, AIDS walks, hospice care, medical missionary work, animal care, tutoring and pro-life crisis pregnancy counseling.

And on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, they sacrificed themselves when they fought back against the terrorist hijackers and saved the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people in our nation’s capital.

Today we have less of an understanding of what it means to be an American and the obligations owed to our country and fellow citizens. The current administration and Democratic Party actively divides us along racial, economic, cultural, sexual and religious lines for the benefit of their own power. The promised unity is disintegrating under “Defund the Police” movements, the allowance of civil anarchy and property destruction in our major cities, the favoring of one group like Black Lives Matter Inc., over a pro-life group or the confiscatory tax policies that require the successful to finance the lives of those unwilling to work, even when well-paying jobs are available.

It was Thomas Sowell who stated: “You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility, and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.”

When we fail to teach our children about the structure and greatness of American exceptionalism and when our political leaders govern beyond the constitutional limits of our laws, we risk losing the love of country and appreciation of those who fought and died to give us a free country to live in.

The passengers and crew of Flight 93 had not lost that vision. Because of flight delays out of Newark airport, Flight 93 took off five minutes before American Flight 11 flew into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Just over 20 minutes later at 9:03 a.m., United Flight 175 flew into the south tower. Shortly thereafter, the terrorist hijackers began to take control of Flight 93 and by 9:32 a.m., they’d achieved their goal.

At this point the passengers and remaining crew began to learn from friends and relatives via cellphones and Airfones that the other crashes were deliberate and that they were on a plane that was going to be intentionally crashed by the terrorists.

The passengers and crew, though, weren’t the type to lay down and accept their fate. They began to boil water to throw on the terrorists and plan how they would rush the cabin and attempt to regain control of the airplane.

The final calls they made told their loved ones that they knew they were probably going to die in this attempt but that they were going to make it anyway. Their counterattack began and while the final minutes are unclear as to what happened, they were able to thwart the terrorists, 20 minutes flight time away from Washington, D.C.

At 10:03 a.m., Flight 93 crashed into a field outside Shanksville, Pa. with no survivors.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt said: “When the time of danger comes, all Americans, whatever their social standing, whatever their creed, whatever the training they have received, no matter from what section of the country they have come, stand together as men, as Americans, and are content to face the same fate and do the same duties because fundamentally they all alike have the common purpose to serve the glorious flag of their common country.”

New York Times reporter and author Jere Longman in his book “Among the Heroes” details the lives of the crew and passengers as they were on that fateful day. And in it he tells about the caliber of the people on Flight 93.

So what we know is this:

The passengers and crew who fought back that day did so as Americans. They joined in a common cause and fought for everyone on the plane no matter what label society might put on them today. They didn’t act as separate groups of citizens.

As the recent events in Kabul, Afghanistan show, terrorist attacks against Americans will continue into the future. As we face those attacks, we would do well to emulate the courage, resolve and lessons that the people of Flight 93 showed us.

For the passengers and crew of Flight 93 were the best of us that day and they died to save others.

It is now up to us to come together as Americans to remember and honor the sacrifice they made.

Hassoldt is a field forester who lives in Kendrick.