Lyz Glick Best: Remembering Jeremy Glick and Flight 93

Lyz Glick Best (0:04)

They loved their families. Each person on that plane, each person in that tower was the most important person to somebody else. And on that day, somebody's entire world crumbled, right? Their hearts broke, their hearts were shattered. A beautiful life was lost for no reason, but we don't know what we can accomplish or do until faced with that adversity. I don't think any of us know, but I think love is the power that can lead you to extraordinary acts.

Frank Blake (0:35)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Crazy Good Turns, the podcast that recognizes and celebrates people who do amazing things for others. I'm your host, Frank Blake, and today we have a very, very special guest. Her name is Lyz Glick Best. She's the widow of Jeremy Glick, who was a husband and a father and one of the passengers who fought back against the hijackers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001 As a nation, we're marking the 25th anniversary of 9-11. It's a grim anniversary, but with it, there are some amazing stories of courage, and this is one of them.

Lyz was on the phone with Jeremy during that flight, and at the time, Lyz and Jeremy had a three-month-old baby named Emmy.

During our conversation today, Lyz talks about Jeremy, about raising their daughter Emmy in the years that followed, and about how she has kept Jeremy's memory alive for her daughter and others every step of the way since. She has authored a book called Your Father's Voice. She has been involved with groups that help others understand and live with grief, and a whole lot more. We are especially grateful to Lyz for joining us. She has not spoken publicly about 9-11 in many years. During the course of over a decade of doing this Crazy Good Turns podcast, I've thought about the nature of Crazy Good Turns. What makes something a Crazy Good Turn? I haven't found any one single answer, but I know that today's episode reflects one aspect of it. How someone can wake up to a normal day, set about doing normal things, and then be faced with a decision requiring the ultimate sacrifice and bravery. Our conversation today is meant to be a tribute, a tribute to Jeremy, a tribute to the passengers and crew of Flight 93, a remembrance of those lives that were lost at the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and to the families who carry the memories of loved ones lost that day. Here's our interview with Lyz Glick Best.

So I'd like to start with going back to your descriptions of Jeremy before 9-11, and who he was to you, and how you got together, and just the story of you as a normal couple.

Lyz Glick Best (3:25)

Yeah. So it's really sweet, I think, to go back and have those early memories, as I was reflecting on this in preparation for our conversation. So we were high school sweethearts. We met the first day of ninth grade in our biology class.

Frank Blake (3:43)

Wow. That's real high school sweethearts.

Lyz Glick Best (3:46)

We were, I don't remember if we chose our seats, or if they were assigned seats, but I was a new student. I had switched to a private school, Saddle River Day School, and Jeremy had been there since seventh grade. And so he had friends, he felt confident, and I was the new kid coming in from a public school to a private school. You know, and sat down across from him, and he was immediately friendly.

He, you know, this was 1984, so he had a big afro, and a crooked smile, and you know, a blazer where the sleeves were probably a little bit too short, and he was immediately friendly. You know, and I think I'm coming from eighth grade, where boys and girls still aren't talking to each other. They're kind of wallflowers on their appropriate sides, and he was immediately friendly, and I think I was taken aback a little bit, had my guard up and wasn't really sure who I was gonna be friends with in this new situation, and you know, one day turned into the next day, and he was making conversation and jokes, and we just became fast friends, right? I had always had friends that were girls, and I think he was my first friend that was a guy, and so that's really how our relationship started. We had common interests. He was funny, you know, he was well-liked by his peers. He was very athletic. He was a soccer player, a wrestler, and lacrosse player all in high school, but then his main passion was judo, and I was a gymnast, so I had private club sport after school, so I think we both had that, you know, experience of training hard in our respective sports and then trying to keep up with the social and our schoolwork and all of that.