Seeing a neighbor play wiffle ball with his two small sons recently brought a smile to David Beamer’s face as he recalled times with his own son, Todd Beamer, who died on Sept. 11, 2001, when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a Pennsylvania field.
Ordinary fathers and sons going off to a little league baseball game or practicing pitching and hitting are sights that fill Mr. David Beamer, 81, with cherished but bittersweet memories.
“For years, that was really, really tough for me to see,” Mr. Beamer told The Epoch Times. “I lament the fact that he wasn’t around for that.”
In the summer of 2001, when the greater Beamer family gathered for a North Carolina lake retreat, he recalls seeing his son teach his 3-year-old grandson how to throw.
“I remember Todd teaching him how to step and throw,” he said. ‘This is how you throw a baseball. You step and throw.’ We have so many great memories.”
Business Travels
There were a few things Mr. Beamer didn’t know on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. On a business trip in California, he and some co-workers were isolated in a meeting without a television and didn’t immediately learn of the four commercial airplanes that were flown into the two World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field.
“The very few of us in that room might have been the only ones in America that didn’t have a TV going that morning,” Mr. Beamer said.
He also didn’t know that his son had returned to the United States on Sept. 10. Todd Beamer, 32, had earned a sales incentive trip to Rome, and he and his wife, Lisa Beamer, five months pregnant with their third child, had arrived home the night before.
“I didn’t think they were coming back until Wednesday or Thursday of that week, so I didn’t know,” Mr. Beamer said.
His son, who worked in software sales, had a California business meeting, so he got on an airplane, Flight 93, in Newark, New Jersey, the day after returning from vacation.
Fight Back
As often happened in Newark, the runway was backed up, so the plane took off 25 minutes late.The remaining passengers and crew were forced to the back of the plane, which had GTE Airfones on the back of every seat.
Passengers and crew members started making calls to loved ones and emergency authorities using Airfones or their own cell phones. These calls helped investigators later understand what happened.
Mr. Todd Beamer tried to call his wife, but he got routed to a GTE operator in Chicago and ultimately ended up speaking with the operator’s supervisor, Lisa Jefferson.
Because Flight 93 had taken off late, those connecting with people on the ground had time to learn of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and came to believe that the hijackers’ claim that they were going to return to Newark was a lie to keep them quiet. They compared information then turned to democracy and voted.
“They didn’t know each other, except some of them were husband and wife,” Mr. Beamer said. “And in the space of about 30 minutes, they came together, they considered options—‘What are we going to do?’ They voted and decided, here’s what we’re doing. So they accomplished all that in about 30 minutes and launched this successful counterattack.”
The plan was to fight back and not allow the plane to get to its target.
Longest Drive
In California, Mr. Beamer received a call from his wife, Peggy Beamer, who was on the East Coast and had learned from their son’s wife that he was on Flight 93. Mr. Beamer’s boss offered to fly him to New Jersey, where a memorial service was planned, but no flights were allowed, so a co-worker offered to drive with him across the United States to get to the memorial on time.
“I'd flown over the country many times, but I had never driven from sea to shining sea, so it was an experience. There were flags flying everywhere,“ he said. ”Some of us remember that in the days after 9/11, we were the ‘United’ States of America.”
Mr. Beamer recalls flags draped over many overhead passes on the freeway and flags in small towns.
“It was a special, special time. And it was about halfway through that trip when I got a phone call providing information about what the people, and certainly including our son Todd, what they had really done on the airplane,” Mr. Beamer said. “I think we knew straight away that United Flight 93, its target wasn’t a quiet meadow in Pennsylvania. And we knew the passengers and the crew, they surely must have done something.
“It was really a blessing, that telephone call Todd was able to have with that GTE telephone operator supervisor ... whom I’ve referred to as an ‘independent ear witness’ as to the facts and circumstances. She’s the one that heard, ‘Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.’”
Those words came just before passengers stormed the cockpit and prevented the flight from reaching what the 9/11 Commission believes would have been the U.S. Capitol in Washington, about a 20-minute flight from where the plane went down, killing all aboard.
“It’s certainly a blessing for the Beamer clan, for all the families, and for the nation to know, yes indeed, the people on Flight 93 had the opportunity to fight back, and they did,“ Mr. Beamer said. ”They launched our first successful counterattack in this new war in our homeland. It was a blessing that this became verified.”
‘Let’s Roll’
The phrase “Let’s roll,” anchored by the actions of ordinary citizens placed in an extraordinary circumstance, became a source of inspiration for Americans.“’Let’s roll’ was a call to action—for the team to launch. It was a call to action—to do the right thing: fight back. And certainly, to do it at the right time: now,” Mr. Beamer said. “Because a few minutes more, and it would have made the enemy’s mission, in their eyes, a complete success.”
Since then, the phrase has been used many times.
“I’ve seen it on fire trucks and police cruisers. And some really brave soldiers have sent me some large shell casings with ‘Let’s roll’ on it as well as signatures,” Mr. Beamer said.
And he has talked with young people over the years who weren’t yet born at the time but have heard his son’s last words.
Blessed Assurance
His family considers it a blessing that they know Todd Beamer was a Christian.“That’s where we have our comfort, our hope, and our assurance. None of us know when our last day is. The important thing is to have yourself sorted out, on what’s your worldview, on the day before. Todd was a Christian. So is this family,” Mr. Beamer said. “I know where he is. I know the future of his soul. In the 22 years since, all of us here on planet Earth, we’ve had good days, we’ve had challenging days. In the 22 years since 9/11, the soul of Todd Beamer has had nothing but good days.”
Beyond a belief, the family’s faith is an assurance or promise from God, he said, and everyone has free will to decide their course and their worldview.
When Todd Beamer died at 32, his sons were aged 3 and 1. His daughter was born after he died. The family has maintained their privacy.
“They’re all doing fine. The boys have graduated from college. They’re productive members of society,” Mr. Beamer said.
The girl is in college, training to become a nurse.
Ordinary People
The United States doesn’t feel as united as it did on Sept. 12, 2001. People forget because that’s what time does, according to Mr. Beamer.“The times are tough,” he said. “I really feel that we are all being subjected to the tyranny of the minority. I can’t believe some of the issues that are being debated as if there is an alternate truth that really needs to be championed. We’re now dealing with terminology and questions that, for the first 50 years I had on the planet, the terms weren’t even a part of known vocabulary. I don’t know how things can change so quickly.”
Mr. Beamer is hopeful that the United States will change course.
A lot has happened in the 22 years since Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Beamer said.
“The thousands of people who continued to fight back, so many of them who shed blood, limbs, lives—I honor what they did,” he said.
Last month, Mr. Beamer was at the Flight 93 memorial site in Pennsylvania, where he met veterans who had lost legs and a woman who served with her husband, who was killed a day before they were to rotate out.
“Tough, tough stuff. And so many families were impacted. But 22 years later, and here we are, we’re still free,“ he said. ”We’re still safe.”
Mr. Beamer and his wife pray daily for all of those who continue to show up for duty, including military, police, firefighters, and all those people who serve and sacrifice their time and energy to keep us free and safe, he said.
And they know that every person has the potential to do the right thing, at the right time, when faced with tough choices.
“Todd was a good guy,“ Mr. Beamer said. ”He was a nice guy. He was a regular guy. He was a humble guy. He was a competitor. And in an unbelievable situation, he and others did extraordinary things, although they were ordinary people.”
