“You ready? Okay, let’s roll.”
Todd Beamer was just some sales guy who worked at Oracle.
Yet he and his fellow passengers saved who know how many thousands of lives when they fought back
against the terrorists that had taken over United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001.
We all have our lessons and stories from that day.
Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you what it was like to live through 9/11 as a New Yorker.
…About walking home to my downtown apartment as the sea of my shocked and debris covered
neighbors emerged up Broadway like zombies from the Walking Dead.
…About hitting redial again and again and again like a Nintendo controller trying to get through to my
friends to make sure they were alive.
…About the hour that felt like eternity while I waited for my roommate and best friend (who worked in the
financial district) to finally walk through the door.
Yes, we all have our stories, but the one that has always struck me the most was one I didn’t actually live
through.
Todd Beamer was the type of person I’d like to think myself to be.
The type of person who answers the call.
An ordinary person who does an extraordinary thing.
So rather than regurgitate some cliché from 9/11 about living everyday like it were your last, I’d rather
focus on the hero we all have living in us.
Maybe she emerges in a firefighter running into a building while everyone else is running out.
Maybe he emerges in a front-line nurse during a global pandemic.
Maybe she emerges in a single mom working two jobs to give her kids a fighting chance.
Whenever our time comes, I think we all have a hero living in us who will answer the call with an
unhesitating, “Let’s roll.”
