A group of airline personnel and friends plan to ride their bicycles from Dockweiler Beach, adjacent to LAX, to Washington, D.C., in tribute to the 33 airline crew members who died that tragic day.
From the Daily Breeze:
Bike ride will honor flight personnel victims of 9-11
[Organizer] Thomas Heidenberger lost his wife, Michele, that day. She was a flight attendant on a plane destined for Los Angeles that crashed instead into the Pentagon.
There were 33 of them killed that morning, 33 flight attendants and pilots who were among the first to confront the terrorist hijackers of Sept. 11.
“It’s not about one person, one individual crew member,” he said from his home in suburban Washington, D.C. “It’s about all 33.
“We don’t know what happened up there. It’s all speculation,” he added. “But they were the first to confront the terrorists. They need to be recognized.”
The five bicyclists will leave April 2 on a route that takes them across 15 states and more than 3,500 miles. They chose to begin near Los Angeles International Airport because that was the destination of three of the four hijacked flights.
A small group of airline workers will set out from Dockweiler Beach early next month on a cross-country bike ride in their honor. The riders have given themselves 33 days to make the trip, one day for each of the crew members killed.It’s a tribute first, but also a fund-raiser for the official 9-11 memorials and a salute to those who still work in the air. For its organizer, the ride is a chance to remind the nation of the full toll of the attacks.