Who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life . . . .

It was an ordinary Tuesday morning in September. Some schools had already started for the year, others soon would. Flight 93 out of Newark NJ boarded passengers for San Francisco. The Boeing 757 jetliner was virtually empty. Just 37 passengers had tickets on a plane that could hold close to 200.

The first 45 minutes of the flight seemed uneventful. As the jet headed west and climbed to 35,000 feet, breakfast was served. Then eerie news began to filter in. From phone calls made to relatives on the ground, passengers learned that two planes had hit New York's World Trade Center at 8:45 and a few minutes later after 9 that morning.

It was September 11, 2001.

But around the time a third plane smashed into the Pentagon, Flight 93 suddenly made a U-turn.

Air traffic control had picked up a transmission from Flight 93 as it neared Cleveland. A stuck microphone revealed something was wrong in the cockpit. Controllers heard the words "Get out of here!" and the sounds of an apparent scuffle.

Soon a man speaking in broken English announced: "There is a bomb on board. This is the captain speaking. Remain in your seat. Stay quiet. We are meeting with their demands. We are returning to the airport."

Passengers had already started calling the outside world to tell authorities and family members of the unfolding terror.

Thirty-eight-year-old Tom Burnett, in New York on business, was supposed to have flown out that afternoon, but switched to Flight 93 to get home earlier. Using his cell phone, he called his wife, Deena, who was getting their daughters ready for school at their home in San Ramon, California.
Burnett spoke quickly but quietly. "I'm on the airplane," he said. "They've already knifed a guy. Please call the authorities."

Deena dialed 911 and was patched through to the FBI. A few minutes later, Tom's second call came through.

"They are talking about flying the airplane into the ground," Burnett informed his wife. He asked Deena several questions; then, suddenly, he had to go.

Minutes later Tom called back to tell her the man who had been stabbed was dead. "Don't worry. We're going to do something."

Deena, a former flight attendant, remembered her own training and urged Tom to keep a low profile. "Please don't call attention to yourself," she begged.

He refused. In his final call, he told her that he and several other passengers had decided to act rather than passively allow these terrorists to perpetrate some atrocity known only to them. "We're going to try to do something," he said.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Glick, 31, a New Jersey resident who worked for an Internet company, called his wife Lyzbeth. She and their three-month-old daughter, Emerson, were visiting her parents in upstate New York. In their 20-minute conversation, Glick and his wife tried to stay calm, with Jeremy joking that he and fellow passengers might assault the hijackers with butter knives from the in-flight breakfast.

Lyzbeth's mother, Jo Anne Makely, got on the cell phone with 911, and with state troopers taking down information, Glick described the four hijackers. They wore red headbands and held a red box they said contained a bomb. The call ended when the six-foot-one Glick told his wife about the passengers' plan to "jump the hijackers." His words were, "Our best chance is to fight these people, rather than accept it."

About the same time, Todd Beamer was on Airfone to GTE supervisor Lisa Jefferson. He told her that he, along with many other passengers and a crew member or two, had been herded to the back of the plane. The remaining passengers were in first-class; the pilot and co-pilot were nowhere to be seen. Todd remarked that he thought the plane was going down, but then he said it was turning.

Beamer's group was being guarded by a man who appeared to have explosives strapped to his midsection. Beamer, a basketball and baseball player in college and a take-charge guy, said he thought that he and the other passengers could "jump the terrorist with the bomb."

In the background, Lisa Jefferson could hear screaming, but Beamer's voice never wavered. He asked the supervisor to recite the Lord's Prayer with him. And he made her promise she would call his pregnant wife and his sons Andrew, one, and David, three, to tell them he loved them dearly.

Then Beamer apparently dropped the phone and said: "God help me. Jesus help me. Are you ready? Let's roll."