![]() ![]() She knew Bingham was supposed to be flying from Newark to San Francisco that morning, but she had no idea, nor did most Americans, that Flight 93 had been hijacked only minutes earlier, the pilots killed, and the plane set on a new course - making a U-turn over Ohio toward Washington, where the White House or the U.S. Alerted by a phone call from a colleague, she had turned on the TV to see the twin towers billowing with smoke, but standing, and the Pentagon in flames. at Judy Curtis’ Portola Valley home when she first called her boss at the Bingham Group, a scrappy little public relations company with an office in San Francisco and a satellite in New York. I just would like to know if you are in the air or what’s happening, and it’s very worrying, with these things.” I don’t know if you’re flying or what because I just heard that all the plane traffic has been grounded today after the attack in New York and in Washington. But on this day, with her head in her hands, she allowed the voices to rain down on her again. She hadn’t listened to them in nearly a decade. On a recent summer morning, in the living room of her Los Gatos mountain home where she raised her only child, Hoagland replayed for a reporter the messages she had recorded on an old cassette player. ![]() What she heard, in a prerecorded female operator’s voice, astounds her even now: Compelled to find some way to keep close to her son, she wanted to retrieve any final messages, including two of her own. But weeks later, Bingham’s mother, Alice Hoagland, asked the cellphone company for her son’s mobile access code. The cellphone, like nearly everything else on Flight 93, incinerated as the plane crashed into a Pennsylvania farm field. “Everyone has that turning point in their lives,” said Tom Bilbo, one of Bingham’s friends who left a message that day 10 years ago. But all remain deeply affected, and in some ways defined, by that fateful day. Most have moved on, changing jobs, phone numbers and addresses. Like many Americans, they have struggled over the past decade to cope with their personal loss and navigate the different world that followed. Without realizing it, as the twin towers at the World Trade Center were collapsing and the Pentagon was burning, the callers were leaving behind a chilling historical record of the confusion, fear and American resolve of that day. The calls came from his childhood buddies in San Jose, a business colleague in Portola Valley, his old fraternity brothers from Cal, rugby teammates from San Francisco. The calls kept coming, each more frantic and heartbreaking than the last, unaware that Bingham and his fellow passengers were taking action that would turn them instantly into American legends. It was the first of dozens of plaintive messages recorded that day on Bingham’s black flip phone - a phone he likely left in his first class seat after terrorists hijacked the plane and herded the passengers to the back. 11 morning 10 years ago when his housemate, Amanda Mark, left the message on his cellphone. ![]() Mark Bingham was still alive and United Flight 93 was still in the air that Sept. ![]()
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