BOSTON — The beverage cart once plied the aisles of Virgin America Airlines, But these days, it’s serving a more noble purpose - albeit an odd one. It is a traveling memorial of sorts, rolling hundreds of miles to some of America’s saddest destinations -- in honor of the flight crews who perished aboard the four jetliners hijacked on September 11, 2001.
The man pushing it: Paul Veneto, a former flight attendant for United Airlines.
On September 10, 2001, Veneto worked United’s evening flight from Chicago O’Hare to Boston Logan. That same plane, a Boeing 767, dispatched the next morning as United Flight 175. It became the aircraft that took down the South Tower.
“When the buildings came down that day, I knew everybody was going to forget what happened at the beginning of that day,” Veneto said.
That is, what happened aboard the four flights, as terrorists armed with box cutters commandeered two United flights and two American Airlines flights, crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
“In my eyes, they’re American heroes,” said Veneto. “They weren’t trained to fight terrorism. They had no choice.”
Veneto promised himself that those crew members would never be forgotten. His unconventional tribute: pushing that beverage cart to each of the four places the airliners crashed.
His destination this year, his fourth, honors the crew aboard American Airlines Flight 11, which took down the North Tower. Veneto set out from Boston Sunday -- headed for Ground Zero.
“I have to get there by September 11th,” he said. “And that’s really all I can focus on.”
Veneto said he’s no athlete -- and that pushing the cart for hundreds of miles is more a mental feat than anything else.
It’s also an inspirational one. Along with honoring the families, Veneto said he’s had the chance to explain to young Americans what happened on September 11th -- and what the flight crews did to prevent it from happening.
“They couldn’t call police, they couldn’t call fire,” he said.
Instead, the flight crews had to band together -- rely on each other -- to fight back.
History will record that, technically, they failed in those attempts. But Veneto is focused on the gallantry of the crews. The fear they must have had to overcome.
With those thoughts in mind, Veneto got behind his cart and started pushing through a rainy, Boston morning, destination, one final time, New York.
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