Todd Beamer
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Todd Morgan Beamer (November 24, 1968 – September 11, 2001) was a victim of the September 11, 2001 attacks. He was a passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 93.
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[edit] Biography
Beamer, who resided in Cranbury, New Jersey, was an account manager for the Oracle Corporation. He died at age 32 in the September 11, 2001 attacks on board United Airlines Flight 93. He is survived by his wife, Lisa Beamer, two sons, David and Drew, and a daughter, Morgan Kay, who was born on January 9, 2002 — nearly four months after her father's death.
Todd and other passengers had been in communication with people via in-plane and cell phones and learned that the World Trade Center had been attacked using hijacked airplanes. Beamer tried to place a credit card call through a phone located on the back of a plane seat but was routed to a customer-service representative instead, who passed him on to supervisor Lisa Jefferson. Beamer reported that one passenger was killed and, later, that a flight attendant had told him the pilot and co-pilot had been forced from the cockpit and may have been wounded. He was also on the phone when the plane made its turn in a southeasterly direction, a move that had him briefly panicking. Later, he told the operator that some of the plane's passengers were planning "jump on" the hijackers. According to Jefferson, Beamer's last audible words were "Are you guys ready? Let's roll."[1] This term would later become the war cry for those fighting Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.[2]
Though it was a widely-held belief that the passengers crashed the airliner in an attempt to save the lives of others on the ground, the 9/11 Commission's findings (based on the "black box" cockpit recording) were that the passengers on Flight 93 did not cause the plane to crash intentionally. They burst into the cockpit and fought with the terrorists over the controls for the plane.
A post office in Cranbury, New Jersey, was named after him. There is also a high school (Todd Beamer High School) in Federal Way, WA, named after Beamer. Wheaton College also has a building named after him (the Todd M. Beamer Student Center). Beamer attended Los Gatos High School, Wheaton Academy, DePaul University, California State University, Fresno and Wheaton College.
[edit] Lisa Beamer
In 2003, Beamer's widow Lisa, along with co-author Ken Abraham, wrote a book about Todd and her attempts to deal with her grief over his death, Let's Roll!: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage [3].
The book is about Todd and Lisa's life before the crash and Lisa's life after the crash.
[edit] Controversy
Lisa Beamer has been subject to some minor controversy in the years since her husband's death. She has been accused of trying to profit from her husband's death after it was learned that on December 4, 2001, she applied [4] for a trademark on the phrase "Let's Roll". The Todd M. Beamer Foundation has since licensed the use of the phrase to Wal-Mart, the Florida State football team, and others [5].
In addition to the controversy surrounding the trademark registration, the public financial records of the non-profit Todd M. Beamer Foundation (now known as Heroic Choices) [6] have come under scrutiny for taking in far more money than were delivered in services. According to Heroic Choices, from 2001 through 2004 the foundation used only 53% of its proceeds to fund its programs [7], falling short of the Better Business Bureau's Standards for Charity Accountibility [8], which state that program activity should account for at least 65% of charity expenses.
[edit] References
- ^ "The phone line from Flight 93 was still open when a GTE operator heard Todd Beamer say: 'Are you guys ready? Let's roll'", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 16, 2001.
- ^ "Hallowed Ground", Washington Post, May 12, 2002.
- ^ Beamer, Lisa; Ken Abraham (2003). Let's Roll: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage. Tyndale House Publishers. ISBN 0-8423-7418-3.
- ^ Trademark application. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Retrieved on April 12, 2006.
- ^ "You can trademark words but not meaning", Reason Magazine, 2000, November.
- ^ Heroic Choices. Retrieved on April 12, 2006.
- ^ Heroic Choices - Financials. Retrieved on April 12, 2006.
- ^ Standards for Charity Accountibility. Retrieved on April 12, 2006.
