Vice President Pence: Flight 93 Heroes "Might Well Have Saved My Own Life That Day"

Aimee Herd : Sep 11, 2017
Fox News

"I will always believe that I, and many others in our nation's Capitol were able to go home that day to hug our families, because of the courage and selflessness of the heroes of Flight 93. So, for me it's personal." -Vice President, Mike Pence

While President Donald Trump observed a memorial service for 9/11 at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen attended a ceremony in Shanksville, PA, where the hero-victims of Flight 93 collaborated to stop the terrorists who had hijacked the plane, ultimately sending it crashing into the ground. (Screengrab: VP Mike Pence delivers an emotional speech in Shanksville, PA/via Fox News)

After honoring their memory in a speech to victims' family members and others present, the Vice President then—choking back tears—explained why, for him, "it's personal."

He described being at the Capitol upon hearing about the attacks the morning of September 11, 2001, and how he'd learned of the third plane that had been hijacked and was on a heading for Washington, DC—that it would reach its destination in an estimated 12 minutes.

He said, "So we waited. It was the longest 12 minutes of my life. But, it turned to 13 minutes, then 14..."

Pence told of how they then found out that the plane had gone down in Pennsylvania.

Speaking of the passengers who banded together to defeat the Islamic terrorists who had taken over Flight 93, the Vice President said, "...Among the many lives that were saved by their selfless courage, they might well have saved my own life that day, 16 years ago."

"...Not more than a year after that fateful day, Karen and I brought our three small children here, to this hallowed ground ... it was that day, with the help of a park ranger that I learned personally of the sequence of some events that day.

"I asked her, ‘if the U.S. Capitol was in fact the target, what time would the plane have reached the Capitol building?' What she told me, I'll never forget. For, at the time she said, standing with hundreds of others, I was standing at the east front of the House of Representatives.

"I will always believe that I, and many others in our nation's Capitol were able to go home that day to hug our families, because of the courage and selflessness of the heroes of Flight 93. So, for me it's personal."

Click here to watch the Fox News video of VP Pence's remarks.