The Husband woke me up with news that one of the World Trade Centers was on fire. I had to consider if I really wanted to get out of bed watch the story on The Today Show. We had recently stood on the very top of one of the towers, the roof top, not the observation deck, & watched all the buildings in mid-town Manhattan turn pink with the reflection of the sunset on our 20th anniversary. It was one of the happiest moments in my life. I felt a special affinity for those ungainly, rather ugly buildings. I got up from bed, & had a cup of tea while I watched the plane crash into the 2nd tower. I sipped my tea & watched as my world changed forever. As the following weeks flew by, I would read the daily special section of the NY Times with the photos & short biographical sketches of the victims. I cried everyday for months. The day I read about about Mark Bingham, I was transformed with grief. I had lost one of my own. The more I discovered about him, the more I felt that I had my own personal gay hero. Gay, a bear, a good guy, a hero. 6’4’’ & 225 ponds, Mark Bingham was last to board United Flight 93, having arrived late & nearly missing the flight. Bingham does not fit the image of the all-American hero quite as neatly as Todd Beamer, a family man from rural New Jersey with a Lord's Prayer bookmark in the Tom Clancy novel he had on board.
Bingham was openly & proudly gay. He was well known & loved in the San Francisco gay community. He was a public relations executive, a graduate of Berkeley. He was a sportsman with a very considerate, chivalrous, caring & creative personality. He has become perhaps the 1st openly gay, great American patriotic figure, & an idol in the gay community.
Andrew Sullivan, gay former editor of the New Republic: “The media portrayal of gays (lots of it by gays themselves) is as effeminate, etc, as well as my personal experience with gays my age, most of whom seemed little interested in military service or aggressive pursuits in general... Mark Bingham could cut it. He's a hero, plain & simple. I simply can't say to myself any more that gays have no place in the military.”
Bingham's friend Hani Durzy remembered how he had once fought off a mugger with a gun: “Mark knew how to use his size & would get into situations without thinking about it - which used to amuse us and scare us. I think he knew himself that was not anyone's idea of a typical gay man”. Bingham's friend & roommate Per Casey: "He didn't politicize his sexuality at all. It's ironic that in death he is being celebrated for something he did not think was worth politicizing, & that's lucky for all of us, & unlucky for people who are biased against us. What he did is both inconceivable and great.”
Durzy: “My feeling is, that if told he would become a gay icon he would laugh. Then he would sit back & think: ‘but if this is going to do some good for the gay community, then so be it… good’.”
Bingham had overslept on the morning of 11 September & the friend with whom he had been staying, Matthew Hall, drove like a lunatic to get him from Manhattan to Newark, screeching to a halt outside Terminal A at 7:40am. Bingham jumped from the car, slinging an canvas duffel bag. He ran to gate 17, down the ramp, boarded the Boeing 757 & sat down in seat 4D, just behind the cockpit. Then he called Matthew Hall on his cell: "Hey, it's me. Thanks for driving so crazy to get me here. I'm in first class, drinking a glass of orange juice."
Flight 93 was due to take off at 8.01am. It pulled away from the gate, but there was a delay of 41 minutes, leaving its passengers to sit & wait before jetting off on what would have been 6 hours across the USA to San Francisco.
2 men aboard had stayed at the Marriott at the airport, paying cash for their rooms & expensive meals: Ahmed al-Haznawi, a student from Saudi Arabia, & Ziad Jarrah, from Lebanon. They sat in first class, with a colleague, 'blending in', as they had been trained to do.
After 41 minutes of sitting, waiting & complaining, United Flight 93 moved down the runway at Newark Liberty International Airport, light with passengers, & heavy with fuel. The view of lower Manhattan would dazzling with my beloved World Trade Centre Towers glimmering their glory into a blue sky. Coffee & breakfast were served.
At 9.30 am, 3 men with red bandannas suddenly rushed towards the cockpit & air traffic controllers in Cleveland picked up this message: 'Hey, get out of here!' The end had begun. Cleveland then picked up an announcement, probably from one of the terrorists having flipped the wrong switch, with a message he thought he was delivering over the PA: “There is a bomb on board, we are meeting their demands, we are heading back to the airport.” This was a lie; the plane began to climb.
The tape recording in the cockpit is a ½ hour loop, beginning with wailing & screaming, & someone pleading not to be hurt or killed. Shortly afterwards, both pilots were seen lying motionless on the floor just outside the first-class curtain, with their throats cut, according to a passenger. United Flight #93 had changed course & was heading for Washington DC.
Final words of love & goodbyes were sent over digital airwaves, 23 from airphones, others from cells, with passengers passing their phones to strangers. Through these calls those aboard UA93 learned what was happening that morning.
The 1st call answered was by Deena Burnett, wife of Tom Burnett, the man sitting next to Mark Bingham. Deena Burnett: “Are you okay?” Tom: “No, we've been hijacked. They've knifed a guy; there's a bomb on board; tell the authorities, Deena.”
Bingham's call was to his mother & was strangely formal: “This is Mark Bingham.I love you.” & then he hung up.
Why so succinct a message? Bingham's friend & former employer Holland Carney, saw his economy of language as the first indications of revolt aboard United # 93.: “If I know Mark, he would not have said anything about what he intended to do. I remember him coming to work one day with a huge black eye. I asked what had happened. He said 2 guys had jumped him & he had fought them off. I said that was dangerous, better to give them the money, but he would have none of it. That would have been him on the plane. He was not someone afraid to act.”Burnett made another call, by which time Deena was watching the World Trade Centre collapse on television. Burnett: “Are they commercial planes?”
Deena : “From that point, he said he was going to have to go out on faith because they were talking about jumping the guy with the bomb. He was still holding the phone, but he was not talking to me, he was talking to someone else & I could tell he had turned away. He said: ‘You ready? Okay, let's roll’."
Between rows 30 & 34, a revolt had brewed along with a pot of boiling water, which Bradshaw was planning to splash into a terrorist’s face. The terrorists would meet with formidable opposition: one passenger was a 6'1" judo champion, Bingham was a rugby player, Burnett had been a college quarterback. Among the other passengers, there was a weightlifter & a former paratrooper.
No one will ever know how the plan to attack the terrorists was hatched, except that experts listening to the tapes agree that the scuffle began not at the back of the plane but at the front, where Bingham was sitting.
Denna Bradshaw: “Tom, sit down. Don't draw attention to yourself.” Tom: “If they're going to run this plane into a building, we're going to do something.”
The cockpit recorder picks up the sounds of fighting: the crash of trolleys, dishes being hurled & smashed. The terrorists scream at each other to hold the door against what is obviously a siege from the cabin. A passenger cries: “Let's get them!” & there is more screaming.
Across Somerset County, Pennsylvania, farmers & commuters watched a plane rock & sway in the sky above them & then crash to earth.
Mark Bingham & the others saved hundreds of lives & probably our nations Capitol building. But the richness & appeal of Bingham’s story is that he so narrowly failed to save himself & the other passengers. Carney: “I can so much more easily imagine Mark bouncing out of the wreckage of the plane punching a high five & saying: "we got the bastards".’
The Husband & I would move to our new home in Portland a few weeks later. It was a unsettling time with so much to be afraid of. A new world, a new city, a new home, a new start. The 1st tree that I planted in the garden of my new home, a graceful small Japanese Maple, I dedicated to Mark Bingham. I prayed for the 1st time in years. I cried as I said: “God bless my big gay hero- Mark Kendall Bingham.” Mark Bingham: “We have the chance to be role models for other gay folks who wanted to play sports, but never felt good enough or strong enough. This is a great opportunity to change a lot of people’s minds, & to reach a group that might never have had to know or hear about gay people. Let’s go make some new friends…& win a few games.
Bingham was survived by his boyfriend of 6 years, Paul Holm.
