Why the Rugby Players of Flight 93 and a Westport Family Mean So Much to Me on 9/11

I played rugby from 2005 until 2023. For nearly two decades, the sport gave me much more than matches, bruises and stories that probably sound better in the clubhouse. Rugby helped shape my character and played a major role in making me the man I am today.

That connection is why the story of Mark Bingham and Jeremy Glick hits me differently on 9/11. Both were rugby players aboard United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. They became part of a much larger group of passengers and crew members who made the courageous decision to fight back.

However, rugby is not my only personal connection to that tragic day. Dianne Bullis Snyder was a Westport resident and a flight attendant aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to strike the World Trade Center. I grew up playing basketball with her son, Leland Snyder, and I cannot begin to imagine what each anniversary of September 11 brings back for him and his family.

Rugby Players Who Answered the Call

According to the National Park Service, Bingham was a championship rugby player at the University of California, Berkeley, and later played for the San Francisco Fog, a gay-inclusive rugby club. The 31-year-old public relations executive nearly missed Flight 93 that morning and was the final passenger to board. Flight 93 was traveling from Newark to San Francisco when four terrorists took control of the aircraft. As the story goes, passengers and crew members were forced toward the back of the plane, where they began calling their loved ones.

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While on the phone with family members and acquaintances, they learned that other hijacked planes had already struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon. They understood that Flight 93 was likely part of the same coordinated attack, and that sitting quietly would not save them. The passengers reportedly voted before launching their counterattack at 9:57 a.m. Bingham and fellow rugby player Jeremy Glick joined Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett and others in rushing toward the cockpit. The official 9/11 Commission report determined that their bravery brought them within seconds of overpowering the hijackers.

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The terrorists deliberately crashed the plane into an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m. Everyone aboard was killed, but Flight 93 never reached Washington, D.C., believed to have been either the U.S. Capitol or White House.

A Different Kind of Rugby Team

I would never suggest that Bingham and Glick acted alone. It's obvious that this was a collective act of bravery involving numerous passengers and flight attendants. However, as someone who spent 18 years playing rugby, I recognize some of the qualities they carried into those final moments.

Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Rugby teaches you to move forward when every part of your body wants to stop. It teaches you to trust the people beside you, protect your teammates and put the group ahead of yourself. Most importantly, it teaches you that no one gets across the line alone.

Bingham and Glick had never shared a rugby field, but aboard Flight 93, they became teammates when it mattered most. The U.S. Rugby Foundation now honors Bingham as a Hall of Fame Chairman’s Award recipient and remembers both men for carrying rugby’s courage and brotherhood into a situation that's nothing less than unimaginable.

A Westport Family’s Loss

While the story of Flight 93 will forever remind me of the camaraderie and coverage that was present, the story of Dianne Snyder reminds me that every person aboard all four planes left behind a family, a community and an empty place that could never be filled. According to the VOICES Center for Resilience, Snyder was 42 and had worked as an American Airlines flight attendant for 19 years. She was remembered as a loving mother, wife and friend whose family had moved to Westport in 1999. I still remember to this day the first time I met the Snyder family.

VoicesCenter.org

I would never pretend to understand what Leland and his family experience every September 11. That is their grief and their story to tell. I only know that growing up with someone who lost his mother that morning makes the tragedy feel much closer than something found in a history book. Having a voice in this community also comes with a responsibility: to help keep Dianne’s memory, and the memories of everyone who perished that day, alive for generations who know September 11 only as history.