Los Gatos HS to honor 9/11 hero alums with military flyover before football game

Los Gatos High School plans to have a military flyover ahead of a home football game on Friday to commemorate two alumni who died during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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The flyover will be part of a ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and honoring the lives of Mark Bingham and Todd Beamer, two former Los Gatos students. Both men were part of the group of passengers that tried to take back control of United Airlines Flight 93 after terrorists hijacked the San Francisco-bound plane.

Bay Area News Group reported Sunday that two F-15C Eagle fighter jets from the 144th Fighter Wing of the California Air National Guard will fly over the game against Clovis High School at 6:55 p.m. The report also mentions that the idea came from athletics director Kenny Perrotti and that the flyover will not come at any cost to the district.

Flight 93 was the fourth plane terrorists hijacked during the 9/11 attacks. As passengers made phone calls to family members, they realized that this was part of a coordinated terrorist attack when they learned about the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. A group of passengers, including Bingham and Beamer, made a plan to storm the cockpit and wrestle control of the plane back from the hijackers. While they were unable to take the plane for themselves, passengers forced it to crash in an empty field in Pennsylvania, away from its unknown intended target.

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Beamer was among the first passengers of the flight to be venerated as a hero. While attempting to contact his wife via Airfone, his call was redirected to a phone operator named Lisa Jefferson, whith whom he was in contact throughout the whole flight. He asked Jefferson to pray with him, tell his family that he loved them, and informed her that the passengers were thinking about attacking the hijackers. His final words that the operator overheard over the phone were “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll!”

Bingham, a Cal rugby player who was on the 1991 national championship team, has been honored for his heroism throughout the Bay Area. His alma mater has an award named after him, there’s an endowment supporting the rugby program that bears his name, and he’s the posthumous namesake of the Bingham Cup, a biennial amateur rugby tournament for LGBT-inclusive rugby teams around the world. The Eureka Valley Recreation Center also named its gymnasium after him in 2002.

The ceremony is set to begin at 6:46 p.m. at Helm Field in Los Gatos.