At Wheaton College, Todd Beamer’s name still greets students in a place built for ordinary routines — coffee, meals, study and fellowship — 25 years after he died aboard United Airlines Flight 93.
“It really is a call to action, a call to stand for what we believe in, a call to meet the moment that we find ourselves in,” Mike Schauer, Wheaton College’s athletic director and head men’s basketball coach, told WGN News.
Schauer played basketball with Beamer in the 1990s and keeps a photograph of his former teammate in his office. The WGN report, released ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, follows Beamer’s story from the Wheaton court to the Pennsylvania field where Flight 93 came down.
Beamer was a 1991 Wheaton College graduate who played both baseball and basketball. The college’s athletics history says he appeared in 92 baseball games for the Thunder, primarily at third base and shortstop, while also playing in the men’s basketball program.
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On Sept. 11, 2001, the 32-year-old Oracle account manager boarded Flight 93 in Newark for a business trip to San Francisco. The National Park Service says Beamer tried to reach his wife, Lisa, by Airfone; when that call failed, he connected with an operator, relayed information about the hijacking and prayed the Lord’s Prayer with her.
At the end of that call, the operator said she heard Beamer ask, “Are you guys ready? Okay. Let’s roll.” The Flight 93 National Memorial records that passengers and crew made a collective decision to rush the hijackers and try to retake the plane, which crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m.
The passengers’ counterassault kept Flight 93 from reaching its intended target in Washington, D.C., according to the National Park Service. Investigators have identified the US Capitol as the most likely target, though the memorial’s account carefully describes that conclusion as probable rather than certain.
At Wheaton, remembering Beamer is not limited to a ceremony once a year. The Todd M. Beamer Student Center, dedicated Oct. 1, 2004, is a busy campus gathering place with dining, study areas, student offices and a chapel.
The college’s account of the center says students entering the lower level first see a bas-relief of Beamer with his sons and the engraved words, “Let’s roll.” Wheaton leaders have described the memorial as a reminder of Beamer’s courage and of the calling to become “faithful courageous followers of Jesus Christ.”
That memory remains personal for Schauer. “He was a junior here when I was a freshman on the basketball team,” he said. “So he was somebody I really looked up to.”
Twenty-five years later, the phrase Beamer left behind still carries weight at the school where he met Lisa and where his name now anchors student life. In Schauer’s telling, “Let’s roll” is not a command to chase danger; it is a reminder that courage often arrives as a decision to do the right thing when the moment is frightening, unexpected and already upon us.
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