The First Lady has described how she felt “scared to death” that her sister, a flight attendant at United Airlines, had been killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack as news of the atrocities started to emerge.
In an interview with AP, Jill Biden recalled not knowing where her sister was on September 11, 2001, and whether or not she was meant to be flying.
“I called Bonny to see where she was because I was scared to death … I didn’t know where she was, whether she was flying, not flying, where she was,” the First Lady told AP. “And then I found out she was home.”
Jill’s sister, Bonny Jacobs, had indeed been flying on 9/11 but her flight landed at around 2 am and she decided to sleep in after dropping her kids off at school.
“So when I got up around noon, it was such a gorgeous day,” Bonny said. “I had my coffee. I sat outside. I literally said out loud, ‘I’m doing nothing today, this day is gorgeous,” Bonny recalled.
When she went back inside, she noticed her phone beeping and discovered that her sister had left a message on the answerphone.
At around the same time, the First Lady was on the phone with her husband who was at the time a Senator. Joe Biden was on a train to Washington DC when the second airplane flew into the World Trade Center.
The First Lady joined flight attendant members of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) during a wreath-laying event in New York City as part of the annual 9/11 memorial service.
Biden described how, as a flight attendant, the “weight of this tragedy would be heavier” for her sister.
“But I know that, as we learned more about that dark day, she felt pride for what happened here as well, pride that it was fellow flight attendants and the passengers of United Flight 93 who fought back, who helped stop the plane from taking an untold number of lives in our nation’s capital.”
United Airlines lost two airplanes in the tragic events of 9/11. United flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles was crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center at around 9:03 am with the loss of life of all 65 passengers and crew onboard.
Passengers and crew onboard United flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco fought back against their hijackers, but all aboard were killed when the aircraft crashed into a field in Somerset County.
The heroic actions of those aboard flight 93 are credited with saving countless more lives on the ground. It is widely believed that the hijackers wanted to crash the aircraft into the Capitol or the White House.
