No greater love

Jane Pauley

Skies were clear blue that morning as travelers arrived at Newark Airport’s Terminal A.  Passengers at Gate 17 might have been especially pleased to find that United Flight 93, with 182 seats, was mostly empty. With only 37 passengers, there’d be plenty of room to stretch out for the long trip to San Francisco.

And there were some big guys aboard.

Like Mark Bingham, a rugby player—

Alice Hoglan, Mark Bingham's mother:  He is powerful - he’s 6'5.  A big, physically fit guy.

Jeremy Glick was another six-footer, a very big big brother.

Jennifer Glick, Jeremy Glick's sister:  He was like a giant teddy bear. You just fell into his arms and you wanted to stay there forever.

Lou Nacke was a weightlifter: at 5’9, he was 200 lbs. of muscle and had a Superman tattoo on his shoulder.

Amy Nacke, Lou Nacke's wife:  When he was a little boy, he loved Superman.  And he’d actually had a cape on and went through a glass window (laughs), pretending to be Superman.

Boarding the plane, they all looked like ordinary people.  But soon they’d all need to be Supermen and Superwomen.

Most likely, the oldest passenger was the first to arrive that morning.  79-year-old Hilda Marcin was moving cross-country to live with her daughter in California.  She was packed and ready to leave at 4:30 a.m.

There were two couples: Donald and Jean Peterson, and Linda Gronlund and Joseph DeLuca.

Pat Cushing was a nervous flier; she and her sister-in-law, Jane Folger, were going to see the wine country.

As the COO of a medical technology firm, Tom Burnett traveled constantly—so much, he married a flight attendant.

Deena Burnett, Tom Burnett's wife: I had just finished flight-attendant training.  Several of us had, and we were going out to celebrate and my roommate was talking to this man who was sitting there.  And she introduced him to me.  And, of course, it was Tom.

The pilot, Captain Jason Dahl, had something in common with many of his passengers: He hadn’t been scheduled for this flight, but was trying to get in extra hours so he could take time off for his anniversary.

20-year-old Nicole Miller was going home after a spur-of-the-moment weekend with close friend, Ryan Brown, to meet his family back east.

Ryan Brown: We had a great great time.  She was so happy and so excited to see these things and to be in New York, have a chance to visit the family that she hasn’t really met.

Booking at the last minute, she couldn’t get on his flight, but Flight 93 was wide open. 

A toy company manager, Lou Nacke only booked his seat the night before. He had a customer on the coast with an inventory problem and offered to fly out first thing Tuesday morning to fix it.

Dr. Weisberg: He was debating whether to send a subordinate, or—in the end, he said, ‘You know, it’s my responsibility. I’d better go.’

Environmental lawyer Alan Beaven— 48 years old, with a 5-year-old daughter and two grown sons—was racing to California to repair the damage after a settlement deal collapsed.

Lauren Grandcolas was traveling from her grandmother’s funeral, but she had reason to be happy: after years of trying, she was pregnant with her first child and was about to write a book.

Jack Grandcolas, Lauren's husband:  She actually had a publisher interested. It was a book to give women guidance on how they could learn new things in life that would bring them greater self-esteem, courage, and self-confidence.

Her husband, Jack, was still asleep when she called to leave a message just before 5 p.m. Calif. time:

Lauren Grandcolas message: Hey, I just want to let you know I’m on the 8:00 instead of the 9:20.

Good news: She got a standby seat on an earlier flight.  Flight 93.

Grandcolas message: So, I get to San Francisco at about 11:00 and I’ll be at the ferry terminal probably a little before 12:00. Okay? I’ll call you then. Bye.

Todd Beamer wasn’t normally one to wait ‘til the last minute to fly out for a same-day company meeting.

Lisa Beamer, Todd Beamer's wife: He and I had just gotten back from Italy Monday afternoon, and he decided he wanted to spend some time with the kids that night and have a little more time before he flew out.  So he decided to try to crunch his travel in the morning.

Jeremy Glick was a brand new father.  His wife, Lyz, had taken their three-month-old baby, Emmy, to her parents’ home while he was away on business.

He was supposed to leave Monday night, but there were problems at the airport: He decided to wait ‘til Tuesday morning.

Lyz Glick, Jeremy's wife:  His flight had been rerouted to Kennedy, he had said, and he didn’t feel like getting in to California at 3 a.m., so he figured he would go home and get a good night’s sleep and just catch the first one out.

Jane Pauley, NBC News:  Do you believe in fate?

Lyz Glick:  I do.

Pauley:  Do you believe your husband was fated to be on that plane?

Lyz Glick:  I do.  I believe that.  I believe Jeremy was meant for a higher purpose.

At 7:55 p.m., one last passenger came rushing down the gangway.  That was Mark Bingham; he’d overslept.  Bingham made a quick call before the plane backed away from the gate to tell the man he’d just started dating, that luckily, he’d just made the flight.

Four other passengers in the first-class cabin had not picked this flight at the last minute.  They’d been casing flights for months.  And their destination was not California.

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The plane pulled back from the gate at 8:01, only one minute behind schedule.  At Boston’s Logan Airport, American Flight 11 had already taken off at 7:59, with United Flight 175 close behind.

All according to a carefully-timed plan: four planes, including American Flight 77 departing Washington’s Dulles Airport at 8:20. 

But the terrorists had not planned on a departure delay.  Flight 93 left the gate on time, but due to heavy runway traffic at Newark Airport that morning, it took off 42 minutes late.

That delay would give passengers on Flight 93 the time to realize that this was a suicide mission and the chance to thwart it.

Minutes after takeoff, Claudette Greene got a call.

Claudette Greene:  My sister-in-law Bonnie, Don’s sister, called me, I guess it was just before 9 o’clock, and said, “Is your television on?  You can’t believe what’s going on.”

Greene’s husband Don was flying to California that morning to meet his brothers for a camping trip.  She feared the worst.

Claudette Greene: But I remember feeling enormous relief when I heard American airlines, because I knew he was on United Airlines.  And I sort of put it out of my head.

At that moment aboard United Flight 93, only the four terrorists knew what was about to happen.  But they didn’t know how it would end.

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