Deena Burnett doesn't know how she did it, but she went on with her morning rituals. She got the 5 year old twins up and ready for school. She called a friend to get them there.
While Beamer was on the phone with Lisa Jefferson, Deena Burnett's phone rang again. Tom was still alive. "They are taking airplanes and hitting landmarks all up and down the East Coast, she told him. "OK," he replied. "We are going to do something, I'll call you back". Click.
In Fort Myers, Florida, Lorne Lyles didn't hear the phone ringing. He'd worked the night shift and had lain down to sleep at 7:30. At 9:47am, the answering machine picked up a call from his wife, CeeCee, stranded in the back of the airplane. When the tape was played back hours later, CeeCee could be heard praying for her family, for herself, for the souls of the men who had hijacked her plane. "I hope I'll see your face again," she said.
Lyz Glick was still on the phone with Jeremy. She stood in her parents living room while the TV screen filled with the sight of two burning towers. "You need to be strong," she said. State police on the other line with Glick's mother in law, relayed a question: Did Blick know where his plane was? Glick didn't know, but he sensed they had changed direction.
Lyz and Jeremy spoke of their love for each other. "I need you to be happy," he told her, "and I will respect any decisions that you make." Then he told her the passengers were taking a vote. Should they try to take back the plane? "Honey, you need to do it," Lyz told him. Glick wondered what to use for a weapon, "I have my butter knife from breakfast," he joked.
Phil Bradshaw was home in Breesboro, NC, on the telephone, talking with a friend about the horrors on TV. The line clicked. He asked his friend to hold. It was Sandy Bradshaw, his wife, the flight attendant. Who was flying the plane? Phil asked his wife. "I don't know who's flying the plane or where we are," she said.
Sandy Bradshaw, who was trained never to spill hot coffee on a paying customer, slipped into the airplane's galley and began filling pitchers with boiling water.
Marion Britton, 53, assistant director of the Census Bureau's NY office, phoned a longtime friend, Fred Fiumano. All he can remember is that is was "sometime after 9:30." Britton was crying. She had been hijacked, she told Fiumano, and two people on the plane already had been killed. "I was trying to console her," Fiumano said. "I said, Don't worry, they are only going to take you for a ride. You'll be all right."
Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas, 38, phoned her husband Jack in San Rafael, CA. She's been scheduled to take a later flight that day, but rebooked to get home sooner. Jack hadn't heard the message. He'd seen the madness on TV, and when his siter in law phoned to ask if he'd heard from Lauren, he checked the phone machine. "Sweetie," the voice came over the tape, "Pick up the phone if you can hear me." There was a brief pause. "OK, I love you. There's a little problem with the plane. I'm fine and comfortable for now." She told Jack she loved him, she asked him to tell her parents and family how much she loved them, too. Then she passed the Airfone to the woman seated next to her. "Now you call your people."
Homor Elizabeth Wainio, 27, took the phone from Grandcolas and dialed her stepmother, Esther Heymann, in Baltimore. "Mom, we're hijacked. I just called to say good bye," she said. "Elizabeth, we don't know how this is going to turn out. I've got my arms around you," Heymann said. Wainio told her stepmother she could feel them. "Let's look out at the beautiful blue sky. Let's be here in the moment," Heymann told her. Let's do some deep breathing together." They passed a few quiet moments. "It hurts me that it's going to be so much harder for you all than it is for me," Wainio said.
"I see a river." Sandy Bradshaw couldn't name it. It suggested, though, that Flight 93 was somewhere over Western PA. "I just told her to be safe and come home soon," Phil Bradshaw said. "She said she hoped she would."
Sometime shortly before 10:00am, Tom Burnett called home one last time.
"A group of us are going to do something," he told Deena. "I told him, No, Tom, just sit down and don't draw attention to yourself," she said. "Deena," he told her, "If they are going to crash the plane into the ground, we have to do something. We can't wait for the authorities. We have to do something now."
The authorities, at that moment, had scrambled three F-16 fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia. The planes, armed with heat seeking, sidewinder missiles were authorized to knock down any civilian aircraft that appeared headed toward a target on the ground. The fighter jets were 14 minutes out of range and closing in.
"Pray, just pray, Deena. We're giong to do something." Tom Burnett told his wife. Still on his own phone call, Todd Beamer was pouring out his heart to his family through Lisa Jefferson, the Verizon supervisor he's reached on his Airfone.
They prayed the 23rd Psalm
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures
He leadeth me beside the still waters....