A report on Jeremy Glick, one of the passengers of the United Airlines flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

 

W. Milford man told wife of plan to storm cockpit

Thursday, September 13, 2001 By PETER J. SAMPSON

Staff Writer

In the final moments of United Airlines Flight 93, Jeremy Glick told his

wife to take care of their newborn daughter and have a good life because

he and a few passengers were going to storm the cockpit to try to prevent

a terrorist attack on the nation's capital.

For 30 minutes before the giant airliner, bound for San Francisco from

Newark, smashed into a field southeast of Pittsburgh, Glick was on his

cellphone talking to his wife, Lyzbeth, at their West Milford home.

As law enforcement authorities, contacted by her father, listened in,

Jeremy Glick told his wife that three knife-wielding hijackers on a

suicide mission had commandeered the plane and told passengers they were

going to crash it as part of a coordinated strike against America.

"He was asking her what was happening with the World Trade towers, 'cause

they were saying to everybody this is happening around the country,"

Glick's sister, Jennifer Glick, said Wednesday during an interview at her

parents' Upper Saddle River home.

It was around 10 a.m. Tuesday, and two planes hijacked after leaving

Boston had already slammed into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan.

"I'm not positive where this was targeted but based on what I'm hearing

now on the news . . . the plane was headed to either the White House or

another target," said Jennifer Glick, 36, an attorney in New York City.

Jeremy Glick, 31, described the hijackers as dark-skinned Middle Eastern

men who brandished knives, wore red headbands, and claimed that a red box

they carried was a bomb, his sister said. They forced the passengers and

crew to the rear of the plane and told them they were going to die.

Jeremy Glick told his wife that he and a few passengers devised a plan to

try to stop the terrorists.

"They were going to jump the hijackers. They kept the phone on and

apparently they went into the cockpit and they crashed the plane or the

plane crashed," Jennifer Glick said. "I don't know how it happened."

Her husband, Doug Hurwitt, said: "He knew that stopping them was going to

end all of their lives. But that was my brother-in-law. He was a

take-charge guy."

Flight 93 was the only one of the four hijacked planes that did not strike

a major target, and some officials said the actions of the passengers may

have prevented an even greater tragedy.

Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the House

defense appropriations committee, said at the Pennsylvania crash site that

he believes a struggle took place in the cockpit and that the plane was

headed for a significant target in Washington, D.C.

"There had to have been a struggle and someone heroically kept the plane

from heading to Washington," he said.

Jeremy Glick, who worked in sales and marketing for a technology company,

was on a business trip to San Francisco.

The third of six children whose names all start with 'J,' Glick married

his junior high school sweetheart and, after trying for a long time to

have a child, their daughter, Emerson, was born June 18, Glick's sister

said.

"He and Lyz adored each other," Jennifer Glick said, and he "adored his

daughter.

Their brother, Jed, 23, agreed.

"He was having a good life," Jed Glick said. "He loved being a father and

was just getting used to it. It's sad that she won't get to know him."

Jennifer Glick said her brother loved skiing and water sports and lived

life to the fullest.

"He always lived life to the absolute extremes and was always a hero," she

said. "[He] was always proud, and would take care of everybody."

He went to Upper Saddle River Day School, graduated from the University of

Rochester, and was a national collegiate judo champion.

Jeremy Glick also is survived by his mother, Joan, a Fairview speech

teacher, and his father, Lloyd, who works at a technology firm in New York

City, as well as brothers Jared and Jonah and sister Joanna.

Jennifer Glick choked back tears as she described her brother's

heart-breaking goodbye.

"He told Lyz that she should be happy in her life and take care of

Emerson. And to say that he loved us, all his siblings, and his parents

and his nephews."