Among the stories that happened on September 11, 2001, none showed more heroic virtues than that of 4 guys who were on one of the hijacked planes that was probably heading for the US Capitol or the White House. Tim Drake wrote a story for the National Catholic Register called, “To Pray, To Act, To Fight: A Hero’s Life.” In it the heroics of Mark Bingham, Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick and Tom Burnett show them as passengers on United Flight 93, which went down in Shanksville Pennsylvania after its passengers rose up and refused to let the terrorists take it over.
Tom Burnett had told his wife a year earlier, how he started to go to Mass daily, and
he would come back after Mass to tell his wife about it. He kind of sheepishly
said he was going to Mass every day, but that wasn’t something he ever did, so
she asked him why. He said he didn’t know. He thought there was some kind of
message that God wanted to give him, so he wanted to spend time at Mass and in
the presence of the Blessed Sacrament to hear what it was. She pressed him about what this
message might be. Finally, he said, “All I know is it’s going to impact a great
number of people, and it has something to do with the White House.” She said, “Do you think you’re
supposed to run for office?” He
said, “No, no, no, it’s not that.” But
he found out a year later and we all found out what it was. Dina, his wife,
said that she could hear in the recordings of the 9-11 calls that her husband was one
of those leading the passengers to revolt against the hijackers, and so Burnett, with
the other three heroes, Bingham, Beamer and Glick, they were able to save the
Capitol or the White House from destruction, as was the case with the Pentagon
and the Twin Towers.
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