Flight 93 at My Table

One of the Schneiders all-time television favorites is the "Golden Girls." One of my very favorite episodes involves Rose (Betty White's character) attending a dinner party with college professors. Someone asks her, "If you could invite any two people, living or dead, to dinner, who would you invite?" Rose being Rose, she immediately includes her two best friends, Dorothy and Blanche. "But would it be o.k. if Jesus stopped by for dessert?" she asks innocently.

Nashville, TN - I always loved that answer. That was my number one dinner guest, too. The second would be a tough choice. And, like Rose, I'd have to ask, "Only two?"
   
Well, then, let's get down to the business of choosing the second. There's the obvious, my husband, Jim. And a fine choice he would be. Desire, though I might, to choose someone more newsworthy, famous, or infamous, I would more likely than not choose my husband, because he is a part of me.
  
I'm going to change the rules, however, and choose a third person.

It simply couldn't be one of our children, who can choose one from three? So, that third person would have been a toss-up, even just a few nights before writing this column. On September 11, 2006, however, I watched a rerun of Jane Pauley's story that aired years ago on "Dateline NBC." She brought us face-to-face with, and into the lives of, the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93. And a quote appeared during that broadcast. It read:

"The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."

The quote is attributed to Thucydides (471 BC - 400 BC), an ancient Greek historian and the author of "History of the Peloponnesian War," which recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens. According to Wikipedia, "This is widely considered the first work of scientific history, describing the human world as produced by men acting from ordinary motives, without the intervention of the gods."
   
I find it amazing that a quote from 2,400 years ago would so aptly describe the passengers on United Flight 93. I wonder if I would have been brave enough to stand behind the beverage cart and throw back the curtain that divided first class from coach. Would I have had the presence of mind to call my husband, my mother, father, brothers, or children, to so calmly express my love and say goodbye? Would I have prayed the Lord's Prayer with others or curled up into the fetal position in my chair and prayed alone?
   
We can never know to what lengths, and breadths and depths our bravery extends. I know from whom it would come. It would come from the One who died that I might live, and it would come from my husband who calls me each and every day just to see how my day is going, and it would come from my children, who teach me more than I could ever teach them.
   
I wouldn't care which of those passengers or crew shared our table. I would love to meet 79 year-old Hilda Marcin, First Officer LeRoy Homer, or flight attendant and former police officer Cee Cee Lyles.
   
I hope they know how they've touched my life. I hope their families might find some comfort not only in how they lived, but how they died. I hope and pray that if I am ever called upon to be that brave, I, with "the clearest vision of what is before me, glory and danger alike, and yet not withstanding, go out to meet it."
   
So, why limit the number of people at your dinner party? I look forward to the day when I may dine with all of these brave and ordinary people, Jesus, my husband, all of my children, and you.

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