Todd Beamer
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Todd Morgan Beamer (November 24, 1968 – September 11, 2001) and a victim of the 9/11 attacks. A passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 93, his last words, misheard as "Let's roll", became a widespread catchphrase following the attacks.
Beamer, a native of Cranbury, New Jersey, was an account manager for the Oracle Corporation. He died at age 32 in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack 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.Toddbeamer.jpg
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 destroyed using hijacked airplanes. He had been talking with Lisa D. Jefferson, a GTE Airfone operator located in the GTE service center in Oak Brook, Illinois, for about 13 minutes (Beamer had tried to call home from an in-plane phone, but reached an operator instead).
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 never succeeded in reaching the cockpit.
Todd's last words were, according to the 9/11 Commission, "roll it"—apparently referring to a serving-cart being used as a battering ram. This was misheard as "let's roll", which became a catchphrase symbolizing American determination, notably: Neil Young wrote a tribute song with that phrase as its title; and President George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address called it the new American creed. Florida State University's football coach, Bobby Bowden, drew both criticism and support for using the phrase as the team's motto for the 2002 season. The phrase has been registered as a trademark by the Todd M. Beamer Foundation, a charity founded by his widow, which has tried to prevent its commercial use by third-party merchandisers.
Todd Beamer High School (http://www.fwsd.wednet.edu/tbhs/) in Federal Way, Washington, which opened in early September 2003, is named after him. A post office in Trenton, New Jersey, was also named after him. Beamer attended Los Gatos High School, Wheaton Academy, and Wheaton College.