The Man Whose Wife Missed One of the Doomed 9/11 Planes and Whose Father Was Killed Rescuing People in the Twin Towers–Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
An inspirational email about a man who was rushing his pregnant wife to the airport, but a flat tire delayed them and she missed her flight.
The man’s father, a retired firefighter, called and said that the missed flight was one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
That turned out to be the last conversation between father and son because the firefighter went to the World Trade Center to help out and was killed in the collapse.
Two years later, a couple came to the man’s door to say that they had been in the World Trade Center that day and that the woman, who was pregnant at the time, got trapped under some debris.
They said the man’s father was the one who rescued her and that while he worked to free her, she talked with him about Jesus Christ and that he prayed to become a Christian.
They had named their child after the man’s father in honor of his rescue of her.
The Truth:
This story has all the earmarks of having been fabricated and is not substantiated by any evidence.
Most notably, there isn’t anyone named Jake or Jacob Matthew or Matthews who died in the World Trade Center tragedy and no firefighters at all with the first name of Jacob.
The eRumor says that the man who told the story was from Norfolk, Virginia and that he was taking her to the airport for a flight to visit a relative in California. That would suggest he was taking her to an airport convenient to Virginia. The eRumor also says that the wife’s intended flight crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center.
The plane that hit the south tower was United Airlines Flight 175, which was indeed going to California, but originated in Boston.
There was a flight on September 11 that took off from Washington’s Dulles airport and was also headed for California, but it crashed into the Pentagon.
Last updated 10/18/03