![]() ![]() The sold-out event, held at an Aurora country club, raises close to $200,000 each year, said Gene Frost, executive director of the Wheaton Academy Foundation.įrost coached a freshman Todd Beamer on the school’s sophomore soccer team. “It’s a chance for me to come back and see some old friends, thank some old friends and to encourage parents who are making sacrifices for their kids to get that kind of education,” David Beamer said. 13, the Beamers will attend a benefit golf outing named for their son to support scholarships for Wheaton Academy students and to reunite with educators who influenced Todd Beamer’s formative years. “It’s obviously a special group of Americans who live in that beautiful little town.” “It’s pretty special that they’ve done,” David Beamer said. They’ve been invited by a minister and longtime friend to a remembrance ceremony in Cashmere, Washington, a small town that’s built a “Spirit of America” Sept. On the 20th anniversary, Beamer’s parents will make an exception. They’ve mostly spent the day, quietly, by themselves. ![]() “He’s had nothing but good days in the last 20 years.” 20 years laterĭavid Beamer and his wife, Peggy, have paid tribute to Todd and the other passengers at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. He’s doing fine,” his father said from his home in Michigan, near Todd’s big sister, Melissa. “We have our hope and assurance and comfort in the fact that Todd Beamer’s soul is in heaven. He clings to those blessings, his son’s Christian faith and his own, to survive the unbearable. “‘We’re the next guided missile,’ so that was certainly a blessing because they had the opportunity to do something.” “They came to understand this was not a normal hijacking,” David Beamer said. Because of the late start, passengers would be able to learn in calls from the plane that two other hijacked jetliners had already slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Hijackers seized control 46 minutes after takeoff. “Even though it was a clear day, sunny day, air traffic was such that United Flight 93 took off late,” David Beamer said. ![]() He counts other, seemingly random blessings from that morning.įlight 93 left the ground from New Jersey’s Newark airport at 8:42 a.m., delayed by a pivotal 25 minutes. “That was a blessing for the whole country,” his father said. He told her to tell his wife, Lisa, pregnant with their third child, he loved his family. He asked her to recite The Lord’s Prayer with him. Todd Beamer, strong, competitive, athletic, traveling on business to San Francisco, told Jefferson of the plan to rush the cockpit. Here was an “independent ear witness” recalling the final moments of his life, giving the Beamers some answers that have eluded so many other 9/11 families, affirming what they already knew about their loved one. During that race across the country, he learned of the in-flight call between his son and GTE Airfone supervisor Lisa Jefferson. ![]() Then in California, David Beamer drove coast to coast - airlines were grounded - to a New Jersey church for the memorial service for his 32-year-old son. Still, the passengers continued their assault.Īt 10:03 a.m., the plane hurtled, almost upside-down, into a field in western Pennsylvania at 580 mph, killing all 33 passengers and seven crew members on board and leaving a crater of scorched earth some 20 minutes of flying time from its presumed target in Washington. As passengers stormed the cockpit, the hijackers tried to knock them off balance by steering the plane sharply to the left and right.Ī cockpit voice recorder captured the sounds of fighting, shouting, breaking glass and plates. Capitol or the White House, the 9/11 Commission later determined. The four hijackers on Flight 93 likely intended to crash the Boeing 757 into the U.S. “And namely to fight back, to launch this successful counterattack.” “It was a call to action, to do the right thing,” David Beamer said. He’ll leave a note of thanks on the windshield of the car because whoever owns it remembers his son’s resolve. “Are you guys ready?” an air phone operator heard Beamer, a Wheaton College graduate, ask his fellow passengers on United Flight 93 just before they revolted against al-Qaida hijackers that morning 20 years ago.īeamer’s father, David, sometimes comes across the same two words on a license plate. His son’s last known words have been stamped on fire trucks and police cars, hockey helmets and the nose of an F-16 jet.Ī Washington state school that has no affiliation to Todd Beamer bears his name and adopted as its motto the phrase he uttered on Sept. ![]()
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