Author details Flight 93
CRANBERRY TWP — The vice president of communications for the Pittsburgh Penguins spent his entire career around sports, but Tom McMillan never gave up his love and passion for history.
That’s why McMillan spent two years of exhaustive research before writing “Flight 93: The Story, The Aftermath and the Legacy of American Courage on 9/11.”
McMillan appeared at the Cranberry Township Barnes and Noble bookstore Wednesday night to sign copies of the book and to talk about the process behind it.
Dozens of interested readers showed up to hear how McMillan visited the Flight 93 Memorial Site in Somerset County more than 20 times before becoming a volunteer greeter at the site of the jet’s crash.
Those experiences created a passion to learn more about the tragedy and the heroism of those on board United Flight 93 who overcame hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001.
But perhaps what motivated him the most, McMillan said, is that there wasn’t one definitive piece of work that summed up the entire story.
That’s when he started writing the book, a process that included countless hours of poring over lists and documents, archives and interviews with nearly 20 family members and officials from the tragedy.
“Why would a sports guy write a history book?” he asked the crowd at the beginning of his presentation. “It’s because no one else did.”
McMillan, who is donating all of the proceeds from his book to the Flight 93 Memorial Fund, said he was astounded to find “amazingly little” being told about Flight 93, and that fact galvanized him into writing.
“I thought the story deserved a full narrative, from start to finish,” he said.
The book isn’t just about Sept. 11, 2001, he said.
Rather, it starts in 1996, when the hijackers began plotting the events that would unfold more than five years later. The information surrounding the flight and those on it occupies the middle chapters of the book, he said, while the last part of the narrative features the stories of those who’ve worked tirelessly to create a memorial at the site.
McMillan fielded about a dozen questions from those in attendance before signing his book and talking with people one-on-one after his presentation.
One of those people was Cranberry Township resident Sondra King, whose nephew Rick was one of the very first responders on the scene of the plane crash.
She plans on giving her nephew a signed copy of the book for Christmas but not before reading it first for herself.
“It’s an amazing story that more people need to know about it,” she said. “I can’t wait to read it.”
Another of those in attendance was Jaci Defelice, an employee of the township’s library.
She came because she remembers 9-11 vividly, and she jumped at the chance to hear more about a storyline that hits close to home.
“I remember Flight 93 well, but I knew there wasn’t a lot written about it,” she said. “Now there’s a definitive source.”
