Skater Honors Hero Passenger Brother
N E W Y O R K, Oct. 5, 2001 -- When Joanna Glick twirls around on the ice in an all-star performance at Madison Square Garden in New York tonight, she'll be thinking of her big brother, Jeremy Glick, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93 who is being hailed as a hero.
The 16-year-old skater was invited to join the performance to honor her brother.
"I really wanted to do it for him because he always backed me in all my skating and he never let me down," Joanna Glick told Good Morning America. "So I think it's a total tribute to him."
Jeremy Glick, a 31-year-old businessman and former collegiate judo champion, is one of the passengers who is believed to have thwarted the efforts of hijackers on United Flight 93 before it crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11.
Event Has New Significance
The figure skating community had already planned to come together in New York Friday night to commemorate a tragedy that took place 40 years ago. On Feb. 15, 1961, a plane crash outside Brussels, Belgium killed all 18 members of the 1961 U.S. World Figure Skating team, as well as 16 of their friends, family and coaches and 38 other passengers. The team had been headed to the World Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
The event was intended to raise funds for future skaters, but the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are giving it new meaning.
Joanna Glick is a little-known competitive figure skater from Upper Saddle River, N.J. She finished 10th in juniors at the National Championship in January, and was contemplating leaving the sport. But the U.S. Figure Skating Association asked her to perform, in honor of her brother.
A Giant Teddy Bear
Glick will skate to Sarah McLachlan's "I Will Remember You," which contains the lyrics "I will remember you, will you remember me? ... Weep not for the memories." The extravaganza will feature ice skating luminaries such as Scott Hamilton, Michelle Kwan and Nancy Kerrigan, but the young skater said she'd only have one thing on her mind.
"It's going to be very personal, I'm not really thinking about the audience. It's really for just Jeremy and I and that's the way I'm going to think about it," Glick said. Because of the age difference between them, her brother was like a protective father figure and a hero to her long before Sept. 11.
"He was always my giant teddy bear," Glick said. "I would stay in his arms and that's what I remember about him from growing up."
‘A Humble Man’
Her brother has become a symbol of heroism amid tragedy, but Glick says that there are many everyday heroes that everyday people should recognize too.
"I think a hero has a thousand faces, it's not just the people on Flight 93 or the people you read about in books: it's the person who helps an old woman cross the street. That's true heroism. That's what our country needs to recognize as a hero," she said.
Just the same, she hopes people will remember the name Jeremy Glick. Her family will be watching the performance, and her brother's spirit will be with her, Glick said.
"He wasn't someone who went out and searched for fame," she said. "It just kind of came to him and he was such a humble man. That's what I want people to remember about him."