September 3: “We’re Going to Rush the Hijackers”

Jeremy Logan Glick, one of four passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 who led an effort to take control of the plane away from its hijackers on September 11, 2001, was born on this date in 1970. Glick was an American National Collegiate Judo champion and a rugby player during his college years at the University of Rochester. The three other defenders of the aircraft were athletes, too, and the hijackers were armed only with boxcutters. “I was thinking,” said Glick’s wife Lyzbeth (who had been with him since they were high school prom king and queen in 1988), “‘Okay, Jeremy can handle a man with a knife, no problem. With him being so strong, and with his experience in martial arts and judo, he’s going to unleash some terrible force.” Using a food-service cart as a battering ram, they raced up the aisle and smashed through the cockpit door. The effort resulted in the plane’s crashing in a field near Pittsburgh, which killed all thirty-three passengers, seven crew members, and the hijackers. It is thought that the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. was the hijackers’ target. The Glicks had a daughter, Emerson (named after Ralph Waldo Emerson), three months old. To read excerpts of the cockpit voice recorder tape, click here. “We’re going to attack. I’m going to put the phone down. I love you. I’ll be right back.” —Jeremy Glick