Sunday, September 16, 2001
By Jim McKinnon, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
"Are you guys ready? Let's roll!"
That's how Todd Beamer lived.
And that's how he died, helping to lead a takeover by passengers on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed Tuesday in Somerset County. It was the fourth plane to go down in last week's terrorist attacks.
Todd Beamer
Beamer, an Oracle Inc. executive from Hightstown, N.J., and others are being credited with foiling hijackers bent on crashing the Boeing 757 into what authorities say might have been a second target in Washington, D.C., possibly the Capitol or the White House.
Flight 93 had left Newark, N.J., at 8 a.m. Tuesday, bound for San Francisco.
"That's Todd," his wife, Lisa, said yesterday of the "Let's roll!" command, which he made over the plane's in-flight telephone. A GTE supervisor talked with him for about 13 minutes before the plane crashed.
"My boys even say that. When we're getting ready to go somewhere, we say, 'C'mon guys, let's roll.' My little one says, 'C'mon, Mom, let's roll.' That's something they picked up from Todd."
Beamer, 32, told the GTE supervisor, Lisa D. Jefferson, that he and others on the plane had decided they would not be pawns in the hijackers' suicidal plot.
Jefferson told him about the other hijackings and Beamer made her promise to call his wife and their two boys, David, 3, and Andrew, 1.
Beamer's call connected at 9:45 a.m. He told Jefferson there were three hijackers, armed with knives. He did not know their nationalities or their intentions.
One of the men had what appeared to be a bomb tied to his midsection with a red belt.
Beamer said he could account for 37 of the plane's 38 passengers. The hijackers had forced 27 of them into the first-class compartment near the front.