Let’s Roll

Day 40 – This will be a short post. It is 5:45 am on a Saturday morning. I just boarded an airplane at Reagan National heading back home. I’m tired. I woke up at 3:30 am to get here. I slept about 2 hours last night because the folks I stayed with had a pretty big rager when the bars closed down.

It’s 9/10/11. Tomorrow is 9/11. As I board this plane I can’t stop thinking of those passengers who boarded a plane ten years ago tomorrow just down the road from here at Dulles Airport. Last night my buddy Phil and visited the Pentagon Memorial where those passengers were used as weapons against American values.

My first flight ever was just four months after those attacks. I decided to become a political operative and took a job with the College Republican National Committee as a field rep for the 2002 elections. I left Columbia and landed at Dulles, only able to make it because my mother gave me one of her valiums. My fear of flying has only decreased slightly since.

I do not have a whole lot to say today because my brain isn’t functioning at full capacity right now. Heck, I don’t even think its operating at half capacity. Perhaps its working just enough for me to sit here and think about all those people. I only remember one of their names and as I sit here I can only hope I never have to go what they went through. We talk so much about the first responder heroes and the victims in the towers and the pentagon. It seems like those passengers are often forgotten, but they are the ones I think about the most, probably because I don’t hang out in skyscrapers often. I do, however, fly all the time. And every single time I think about those passengers.

The one name I remember is Todd Beamer. He was in his early 30s, about my age, when his plane was hijacked leaving Newark. He was one of the men who helped take back Flight 93, saving either the Capital or the White House. Before taking the cockpit, he was heard over the telephone saying, “let’s roll.” You dang right – LET’S ROLL!

Our nation is facing some tough times right now and we’re getting our butt kicks in the global marketplace. This is America. Let’s all wake up and use Todd Beamer as motivation to scream LET’S ROLL!

- Wesley Donehue