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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE December 13, 2002

eveningsout

Brisk biography tells story of Sept. 11 hero's zest for life

Hero of Flight 93

by Jon Barrett

Alyson Books, $13.95 paperback Reviewed by David Williams

Rushed into print for the first anniversary of one of America's darkest days was a new biography of Mark Bingham, the remarkable gay man on United Flight 93 who turned out to be one of that day's great heroes. Bingham and others stormed the cockpit after they learned the plane was probably heading for a target in Washington. It ended up plowing a fifty-foot crater into the Pennsylvania countryside.

What can you say about the life of a man who was only 31 and still hadn't found his calling in life? Surprisingly a lot, considering the subject. Bingham had more zest for life than most of us can even imagine. Think Hemingway. Think the bulls of Pamplona. His work-hard. play-hard ethic eventually took him places he could never have dreamed of as a poor kid growing up in 1980s Califor-

nia.

The accidental, pre-marital child of an unlikely Mormon couple (his mother converted to please her husband), Bingham grew up all over California and elsewhere. For a brief time, he and his mother, airline stewardess Alice Hoglan, lived out of their car in Monterey. For sustenance, Bingham sometimes caught fish from a pier.

Times were tough, but the times didn't know how tough Bingham was. That might have something to do with genetics: His mother somehow passed on a spirit of rock-hard perseverance to him.

The only real shadow in his early life was his homosexuality. He knew from age twelve he was gay, but his sexuality didn't seem to fit into the same mold from which other gays were formed. That's a profound understatement. A rough-and-tumble kid who learned how to fight, he soon gravitated to rugby, undoubtedly the roughest team sport in the English-speaking world.

himself in flux both personally and professionally. Sadly, Bingham was on the verge of

10000 1000 101 *****

HERO OF FLIGHT 93

MARK BINGHAM

The struggle to reconcile his sexual attractions is at the heart of this book. In typical Bingham fashion, he went at it methodically, telling only one or two friends or family members at a time. Most poignant, of course: the afternoon he told his mother. More amazing is the kegger he threw for friends and frat brothers at Cal State with the purpose of coming out to all of them at once. Bingham wasn't one to waste time.

After graduation, Bingham went into public relations work in the burgeoning dot-com field. Eventually he founded his own company. But when dot-com dot-went, he found

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something new, ai d perhaps more settled, when he died. In the last year of his lifea period of transition-he traveled extensively to Europe, New Orleans, and elsewhere, neglecting the company he'd founded. At the time of his death he was living on both American coasts, undecided what to do with the rest of his life.

We'll never know, of course, exactly what transpired on that Boeing 757 in the last half hour of its flight, but author Jon Barrett has done a yeoman's job of piecing it all together. His gripping account near the end of the book is a stunner, perhaps the most exacting re-telling we'll ever have.

How do you tell the story of a man who lived only 31 years and hadn't yet accomplished a whole lot professionally? Interviews with family and friends. Barrett man-

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aged to track down nearly everyone in Bingham's life who was willing or able to talk, Sadly, parts of it remain sketchy; a fuller biography may come along some day.

To fill some gaps, Barrett at one point near the end of the book dives into an extensive email exchange between Bingham and a friend who went off to teach in Africa. It's a nice respite from the energetic adventures he describes before then, but it could have been edited for length. It doesn't add much to Bingham's portrait.

But who are we to quibble here? It's one of the few "letters" we have. Given Bingham's tragic demise, it's a nice, mellow portrait of Bingham in the last month of his life, and therefore hard not to read in its entirety.

When his friends heard that a few passengers on Flight 93 had rushed the cockpit and diverted the plan from its intended target— most likely the White House they knew right away that Bingham had to be among those passengers. After reading this short, briskly written book, there was no doubt in my mind, either.

David Williams is editor of the Letter, a Kentucky LGBT newspaper.

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Karmen Gei will be shown at the Cleveland Cinematheque, inside the Cleveland Institute of Art, 11141 East Blvd. It will be shown at 9:20 pm on Friday, December 13, and at 7 pm the following day. For more information and ticket prices, call 216-4217450 or visit www.cia.edu/cinematheque.

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