Heroism and Horror of 9/11

CAIRO - Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, a hideous wave of terrorist takeovers on four airplanes resulted in the death of 2,977 people, including passengers, citizens and emergency response personnel.

Among them was Jeremy Glick, aboard United Airlines Flight 93, a judo champion, rugby player and father of a then-young daughter, Emmy.

Glick died when he and other passengers, such as Thomas Burnett and Mark Bingham, charged the hijackers, a fight that ultimately ended with Flight 93 never reaching its terrorist intentioned target.

Their spontaneous sacrifice is the stuff of heroism being remembered and commemorated across the nation, this Friday, on the anniversary of what has become reverently known as 9/11.

Greene County Legislature members and other officials will gather, as they do ever year, for a solemn ceremony at the county emergency services center in Cairo.

That event will unfold in the morning, followed in the evening with a tribute at the Greene County Volunteer Firefighters’ Association Convention unfolding in the town of Ashland.

A poignant raising of Old Glory will take place, focusing on Glick, a few miles from the town of Jewett where a road is named after him.

Glick’s wife was there, at her grandparents’ home, as the devoted family man joined what a 9/11 Commission report calls a “passenger revolt, saying to his wife, instants before the assault, “take care of Emmy.”

The 9/11 Commission report tells the chilling story of how 19 men boarded four transcontinental flights, intent on malice.

Some of the terrorists were red flagged or set off metal detectors trying to gain passage but by 8 a.m. “they had defeated all the security layers that America’s civil aviation security system then had in place to prevent a hijacking,” the report states. 

The men were “planning to hijack these planes and turn them into large guided missiles, loaded with up to 11,400 gallons of jet fuel,” the report states, an unimagined scenario.

History, and a way of life, changed drastically over the next hour and seventeen minutes as the deviously devised plan was conducted.

That seemingly just-moments-ago Tuesday, “dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States,” the 9/11 report states. “Millions of men and women readied themselves for work.

“Some made their way to the World Trade Center. Others went to Arlington, Virginia, to the Pentagon.  Across the Potomac River, the United States Congress was back in session;

“For those heading to an airport, weather conditions could not have been better for a safe and pleasant journey,” the report states.

“Among the travelers were Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari who arrived at the airport in Portland, Maine.

“Atta and Omari boarded a 6 a.m. flight from Portland to Boston,” the report states. They transferred to American Airlines Flight 11, the first plant to strike the World Trade Center, hitting the North Tower at 8:46 a.m.

United Airlines Flight 175 struck the North Tower next, at 9:03 a.m. Thirty- four minutes later, American Airlines Flight 77, smashed into the U.S. Pentagon, the report states.

Meanwhile, United Airlines Flight 93 departed Newark Airport 25 minutes tardy, lifting off at 8:42 a.m., bound for San Francisco.

The deadly battle for United 93 would commence over an hour later. “No one had ever dealt with multiple hijackings. Such a plot had never been carried out in the United States,” the 9/11 report states.

“By all accounts, the first forty-six minutes of Flight 93’s cross-country trip proceeded routinely. The hijackers attacked at 9:28 a.m…traveling 35,000 feet above eastern Ohio…and the plane “suddenly dropped 700 feet.”

“FAA’s air traffic control center in Cleveland received the first of two radio transmissions from the aircraft,” the report states.

“During the first broadcast, the captain or first officer could be heard declaring “mayday” amid the sounds of a physical struggle in the cockpit

“The cockpit voice recorder data indicate that a woman, most likely a flight attendant, was being held captive in the cockpit. She struggled with one of the hijackers who killed or otherwise silenced her,” the report states.

“Shortly thereafter…began a series of calls from GTE airphones and cellular phones. These calls between family, friends and colleagues took place until the end of the flight…including the news that two aircraft had slammed into the World Trade Center.

“Callers reported that a passenger had been stabbed and that two people were lying on the floor of the cabin, injured or dead - possibly the captain and first officer,” the report states. 

“Five calls described the intent of passengers and surviving crew members to revolt against the hijackers. According to one call, they voted on whether to rush the terrorists in an attempt to retake the plane.

“They decided, and acted. At 9:57 a.m., the passenger assault began,” the report states, with the cockpit voice recorder capturing the sounds while a  terrorist, at the helm, rolled the plane from left to right, trying to knock the passengers off balance.

“With the sounds of the passenger counterattack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania…about 20 minutes flying time from Washington D.C.” the report states.

Glick and his compatriots thwarted a scheme to, “crash the airliner into symbols of the American Republic….the Capitol or the White House…defeated by the alerted, unarmed passengers of United 93.”