Heroes

Heroism struck a chord with me tonight at work.

It started with me having to write about this memorial dedicated to the victims of United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania September 11th. The memorial was built in Union City so it was a story we'd been covering all day.

I needed to do a bit of background research on the event so I hit up Wikipedia and read some of the detailed accounts of what transpired that tragic day. I read about some of the people who decided to try and take back the aircraft from their switchblade-equipped assailants.

Several passengers/crew were killed even before the plane hit the ground.

One man had apparently gotten a phone call through to an emergency dispatch operator and had told him a group of passengers on board Flight 93 had decided they weren't going to die without a fight.

The last thing the operator heard on the phone was "Are you guys ready? Let's roll."

Six years later, it makes me very sad to know that while I was sound asleep the time the hijackings were taking place, there were people tens of thousand of feet above me literally fighting for their lives...and their families knowing about it.

I can't even fathom what happened on board that plane. Sometimes not knowing is even worse than the truth.

When we, average folk, hear about those events retold we consider them acts of bravery...because they are. They are heroes in our eyes. They attempted to not only save their own lives, but the lives of countless others with families of their own.

They weren't expecting that their flight bound for the Bay Area would have such an unexpected ending. Most probably had family just chomping at the bit waiting to hug and kiss them at the airport.

You know...the kind of stuff you see in the movies.

Reading about it 6 years later, it almost does seem like a movie (too bad someone had to make it into one).

If you were on that flight, how much would you have cared about the person next to you if it were just another routine flight from point A to point B? You probably wouldn't have even talked to them except for maybe a few words. You might have passed a cup of ice and a ginger ale to the person at the window seat, but nothing more. No conversation. Why would you spend time trying to know someone you'd probably never see ever again?

But if it was the only person you'd ever see again...now THAT would be a different story.

Yet in extreme circumstances is where you sometimes see the humanity in us all...where you see the people who care...and honestly...where we all care.

This was one of those situations.

United Airlines Flight 93 may one day become lost in the annals of time along with so much before it.
Tragedy is something we've all come to take as a commonality in our culture anyways.

Heroism, however, is transcendent...resonating well beyond the pages where it was written about...and the voices that spoke of it.

Only you can decide whether heroism or the preservation of life are different. Isn't that what heroism is?

To be selfless is a heroic attribute...and heroism is the selfless preservation of life.

Those people aboard that flight were heroes. Sure we can all wish to be the hero that saves the day ...the one who everyone adores and admires. A happy ending, however, is not something we can all count on.

Life is not like the movies, no matter how many people make it out to be.

Yet there are moments when fiction...and reality...do seem awfully similar.

Something to chew on...

C