Verizon Worker Recounts Her 9/11 Conversation With UA Flight 93 Hero
by Allie Martin
September 11, 2006
(AgapePress) - - As the nation remembers and reflects on the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, one woman recalls how God prepared her for a pivotal role in the event. On that fateful morning, Lisa Jefferson was the Verizon supervisor on duty who spoke with United Airlines Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer during the final moments of that flight. The Boeing 757-222 from which Beamer called that that day was one of the four planes hijacked as part of the September 11, 2001 attacks -- the only one of the four aircraft that failed to reach its intended target. Instead, Flight 93 crashed in an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, about 150 miles from Washington, DC, after passengers and flight crew members intervened in a heroic but ultimately fatal effort to subdue the terrorists.
It was just moments after Jefferson and her staff learned of the terrorist plot that she took the call from Beamer. "I told him, 'My name is Mrs. Jefferson, and I understand your plane is being hijacked,'" the Verizon supervisor recalls. And for the next 15 minutes, she says she prayed with Beamer and listened as the tragedy in the air unfolded.
"The plane took another dive," Jefferson notes, "and you could hear the commotion in the background. I heard men crying and screaming, 'Oh, my God. Jesus help us.' The commotion is something I will never ever forget." Then, she recounts, she heard Beamer and others discussing a plan to take back the plane from the terrorists.
"The last thing I heard from him was, 'Are you ready,' the mobile company worker remembers. "He was speaking to someone else, and he said, 'Okay.' He said, 'Let's roll.'"
Jefferson details that phone call, and how God has allowed her to use her recollections of the events of that day as a witnessing tool in a book titled Called (Northfield Publishers, 2006). One of the messages of the book, she explains, is that believers must be available and prepared for the time when they may be called upon to live out their faith in some unexpected way.
"God has an assignment for you that only you can fulfill," the author asserts. "God put me in the role of being an 'ear witness' to the bravery of the men and women on Flight 93," she says, "and the reason I wrote Called is because I believe any one of us can find ourselves in a similar situation, where we may be called upon to do something extraordinary when we least expect it."
Days after the terror attacks, the woman who found herself on the receiving end of Beamer's fateful 9/11 phone call was able to share crucial details of the hijacking with authorities and to share the heroic passenger's final thoughts with his wife. However, the Verizon worker had no way of knowing when she came to work that morning what a pivotal role she would be playing in the tragedy and drama of the day's events.
In the same way, Jefferson points out, any Christian may find herself or himself surprised by a special assignment from God. "But the question is, are we ready to respond to whatever it is that God has planned for us," she says.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
