Word: beamer
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Before he caught united airlines flight 93 from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco on Sept. 11, Todd Beamer was engaged in a kind of soul searching that we have come to think of as very post-9/11. In Among the Heroes (HarperCollins), New York Times reporter Jere Longman writes that Beamer was tired of leaving his family for business. He was working at home more often. He had postponed his sales trip by one day to spend time with his sons and planned, after a day's work, to catch the red-eye home that night...
...Instead, Beamer added "Let's roll" to the patriotic lexicon when he and his fellow passengers attacked the hijackers, who intended to crash the jet in Washington. As they struggled, the plane went down in a Pennsylvania field, killing all on board. Flight 93 became the Warsaw Uprising of 9/11, a national blueprint for resistance and a tonic against helplessness...
...another reason the story resonates so deeply is that many of us are in Beamer's position. Since Sept. 11, we've told ourselves that facing our mortality changed our attitudes toward work and life. Yet here we are, still working in those office towers, still catching those planes. This is the paradox of our post-9/11 "reprioritizing": America - credit-addicted, 25-brands-of-toothpaste-on-the-shelf America - cannot afford for us to examine our lives too closely. Our way of life is predicated on our not taking stock; not getting off the career-overtime-promotion hamster wheel...
...world may have seen its last airplane hijacking for a while - another unintended and unexpected consequence of Sept. 11. Once an essential tool of terrorists, hijackings will be next to impossible as a result of improved security and the general public's vigilance. The heroism of passengers like Todd Beamer on United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania means that would-be hijackers will be thwarted by the fury of fellow travelers. People like Beamer have helped start a new trend: ordinary people as the new celebrities...
...didn't want to sit on the sidelines at a time like this. Last week Green Beret Nathan Ross Chapman was buried by his family: we met his widow Renae on the Today show, saw the broken-heart necklace that he had given her. And last week Lisa Beamer, widow of Todd, hero of Flight 93, had her baby, Morgan Kay, 7 lbs., 21 in. We saw the first baby pictures...