![]() "These children are very young and it will be a long time until they're self-sufficient." 11) who fit Todd's profile: a dad with young kids and a stay-at-home mom," Lisa, herself a former Oracle saleswoman, said during her flight yesterday. "There are so many people (affected by Sept. Beamer Foundation, org, to help care for the children of Flight 93 and victims of any future terrorist attacks. The insurance company has agreed to make an exception. And after Todd's death, she learned that buried in the fine print of his life insurance policy was a clause that exempted benefits for victims of terrorism or war. She was 15 when her own father died, leaving a wife and four children without health insurance. Lisa has suffered such loss both as mother and child. Nineteen other children, some of whom she met at the Pennsylvania crash site and at the White House, will grow up without a father or mother. Instead of becoming lost in her personal tragedy, Lisa has turned her sights to helping the other families left behind by the crash of Flight 93, which killed all 44 people on board. ![]() Todd had asked an Airphone operator to call his wife as he and others prepared to "jump the terrorists." As he dropped the phone, he said, "Let's roll." She remembers the phone ringing on the fateful morning the dead air on the line when she answered. She has been interviewed countless times, was featured at President Bush's address to a joint session of Congress and presents herself with remarkable poise that belies her circumstances.Īt 32, she has been left a single, stay-at-home mother with a toddler, an infant and a third child due in three months. In the six weeks since the attacks, Lisa has become a defacto spokeswoman for the heroes of Flight 93: her husband of seven years, Todd, 32, a Los Gatos high school graduate San Francisco resident Mark Bingham, 31 San Ramon resident Thomas Burnett, 38 and Jeremy Glick, 31, of New Jersey, who worked for a San Francisco Internet company. "These terrorists have tried to scare us and paralyze us. "His example is one I'm following," she said after landing in San Francisco. Yesterday, Lisa completed the journey for him. 11, he and other passengers on United Flight 93 apparently fought their attackers before the plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field. As hijacked planes slammed into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. So I’m just going to do a day with my kids.Todd never reached his destination. Todd would want me to be there with them. I thought, ‘That’s where I should be,’ just doing the normal things that they need me for, the normal things that I’d be doing had this not all happened. And I looked at the calendar a few days ago and I realized it was my boys’ second day of pre-school. And nothing quite seemed like the right thing to do. Lisa Beamer: I’ve actually struggled with that a lot - different opportunities to go to Shanksville or go to a memorial somewhere. Stone Phillips: How do you plan to mark the one-year anniversary? that is an automatic thing or to say, ‘You know what? David did swim across the pool. Or did you hear that funny thing that Drew just said?’ And I have choices every day when something like that happens to just fall apart and just be incredibly sad that the grief. Lisa Beamer: Not being able to call Todd and say, ‘Hey, guess what? David swam across the pool today. Stone Phillips: What’s the hardest part of each day now for you? Stone Phillips: If you could have spoken to Todd that day on the plane, what would you have said to him? I wouldn’t know for sure what had happened with Todd. Lisa Beamer: You know, if it wasn’t for Lisa Jefferson, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now. And over the past year, they have stayed in touch. Four days after 9/11, the two Lisas spoke. It was Lisa Jefferson who heard him utter, “Let’s roll” to a fellow passenger as the counterattack began. In his 15 minute conversation with Lisa Jefferson, Todd described the desperate situation on board - and asked her to tell his family how much he loved them. And he thought Lisa would be better able to help him do that than I would, and he was right. He was just trying to do what he could to get out of there. And he was just trying to do the right thing. But he said he didn’t want to upset me unnecessarily. And as I talked to Lisa later on, she said he went back and forth quite a few times whether he wanted her to connect him to me or not, because she could have done that. I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t call me. And I’ve always been thankful that I didn’t speak to him. Lisa Beamer: Yes, he spoke to Lisa that day.
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