Last week, Americans reflected on the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, when terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 men, women, and children after hijacking four airliners and deliberately crashing them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. For those of us who lived through that day, the images remain impossible to forget: firefighters running into burning buildings, dust covered strangers comforting one another, a reeling nation trying to comprehend the scale of what was happening.
We also remember that as terrible as the toll that day was, it could have been worse. The terrorists’ plan was thwarted, in part at least. The passengers and crew of United Flight 93, the fourth plane hijacked that day, crashed in a remote field in western Pennsylvania. It was the only plane flown by terrorists that did not kill additional people on the ground. A desperate struggle aboard Flight 93 was the reason why. It was America’s first counterattack in the War on Terror, and a stark reminder of American civic values. You see, the passengers and crew of Flight 93, when faced with an unimaginable situation, chose a uniquely American solution.
United Airlines Flight 93 was the last of the four planes hijacked that morning to take off, delayed on the tarmac for 42 minutes. It lifted off only four minutes before American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower. About 45 minutes later, hijackers stormed Flight 93’s cockpit and took control of the plane, killing or incapacitating the two pilots, a flight attendant, and a passenger. Their target is believed to have been the U.S. Capitol. The remaining 32 passengers and four crewmembers were moved to the rear of the aircraft. From there, they began calling loved ones on the ground. In all, they made 37 calls during the 35 minutes between the hijacking and the plane going down. During those calls, they learned of the attacks in New York and Washington and shared this information with one another. Quickly deducing that their plane was likely part of the same plot, the group began to deliberate on a response.
Then came an astonishing act. An election. The passengers and crew of Flight 93, huddled in the back of their hijacked aircraft, held a vote on whether they should act to try to retake their plane. We know this because flight attendant Sandra Bradshaw, on the phone with her husband, told him they were “currently taking a vote” on whether to rush the cockpit. Afterward, she went to the galley to boil water for the assault. Passenger Jeremy Glick, a former collegiate rugby player and judo champion, told his wife over the phone that the group had voted to take the plane back. Passenger Tom Burnett, on the phone with his wife, Deena, confirmed to her at 9:54 a.m. that they were “waiting until we’re over a rural area.” Then, he added, “We’re going to rush the hijackers.”
In less than 30 minutes, the terrorized passengers and crew had gathered information from loved ones, discussed options to prevent additional casualties on the ground, and voted to confer legitimacy on their decision. In the face of an attack on the American way of life, the men and women of Flight 93 answered with debate and democracy, civic participation and duty – core values of our civic identity. True to their vote, once over a rural area east of Pittsburgh, the assault began, ending with a fight for control of the cockpit and a fireball in a field in Somerset County at 10:03 a.m.
The passengers and crew of Flight 93 fought back – the first coordinated act of defiance in a war that had come to American soil only 77 minutes earlier. Ordinary citizens led the way. They joined an American tradition of bottom-up leadership in moments of crisis. Just as local militia lined up in Lexington to defy the British Crown, or Rosa Parks and others boycotted busses in Montgomery, the heroes of Flight 93 exhibited the greatness of American values through courage and teamwork.
Every election is important. But the one that took place 20,000 feet in the air on September 11, 2001 revealed something enduring about the nation the terrorists tried to break. When confronted by the unthinkable, Americans chose not only to fight, but to decide to do good together.
As we remember 9/11, let us think back not only to what life felt like on September 10, 2001, but also of what this country became on September 12. We were united in grief, compassionate toward our dead and wounded, grateful to first responders, and so deeply imbued with our republic’s democratic values that the first thing a group of strangers decided to do when confronted by the unthinkable was vote on how to handle it together.
In that moment, democracy was not just something they, as Americans, had inherited. Rather, it was something they practiced when the stakes were highest.
Mel Levey is the Merced County Registrar of Voters, the county’s chief elections official. A combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, he was inspired to attend West Point and lead American soldiers after watching the Twin Towers fall during his junior year of high school.