America's 9/11 Foundation Ride visits all three crash sites from September 11, 2001
Roger Flick, executive board member of America's 9/11 Foundation and Eric Sjurseth, co-founder, joins 'Fox & Friends Weekend' with his daughter to discuss the 9/11 Ride honoring victims and first responders of the attacks 21 years later.
It has been 21 years since terrorist attacks killed 2,996 people in New York City, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. Debra Burlingame lost her "hero" big brother — a pilot who was killed when terrorists hijacked American Airlines 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon.
"On 9/11, we were in a completely shocking and uncharted territory. Our hero brother, who is unbreakable, had his plane hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. And so it was surreal. And now here's our big brother, a Navy fighter pilot, a tough guy, gone," Burlingame, the younger sister of Charles ‘Chic’ Burlingame, told Fox News Digital in a recent interview.
Her brother's plane crashed into the Pentagon at about 9:37 a.m. 21 years ago on Sept. 11. The former Navy fighter pilot died one day before his fifty-second birthday.
The crash killed all 64 passengers onboard, including six crew members and the five men associated with al Qaeda who hijacked the plane. The crash also killed another 125 people who were in the Pentagon during the attack.
TUNNEL TO TOWERS HONORS 9/11 HEROES WITH 104-STORY FREEDOM TOWER CLIMB AFTER TWO-YEAR HIATUS
Burlingame recounted that her sister-in-law called her at about 6:30 a.m. Los Angeles time and asked her to turn on her television.
"When I turned it on, the North Tower was smoking and she had called me when the second plane hit. And now they were showing a replay of the second plane hitting, that's a very vivid memory," she said. "I was getting calls from people, asking me if Chic could be a part of this, and I said, 'No, no, no Chic flies out of Dulles. He's never in New York airspace.'"
Then her brother Brad called her screaming.
"He was just screaming and I couldn't understand what he was saying," she said. "And he was just saying over and over, 'It's Chic. It's Chic'… I've never heard him in that kind of emotional state. And I said, ‘What do you mean, what do you mean?' I didn't think he was talking about what we were seeing in front of us on the television. Because I didn't want to think that."
Burlingame said she grew up in a military family, living in "different places all over" due to their father's Air Force career. Chic followed in his father's footsteps and also joined the military. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1971, flew F-4 Phantoms aboard the USS Saratoga and served at the Pentagon during the Gulf War. He was the recipient of the Defense Superior Service Medal and retired from the Navy in 1996 at the rank of captain after 25 years of service.
"He was very patriotic. He painted USA on the wings of a plane he built with scrap lumber at one of our old houses. He didn't want to just be a pilot. He wanted to be a military pilot. And he was around aviation his entire life," his sister remembered of him.
Burlingame said her big brother "loved America, the way our family did."
"My father was a great patriot, and he was a World War II vet and was 20 years with the Air Force. And so that was our life. America was a country that we just took for granted as the greatest place in the world. And we just were very patriotic when we lived in Washington, D.C. My father loved this country. And he taught us to love this country and why it's so special. And that's why Chic was so gung ho, not just to be a pilot but to be a military pilot and serve his country," she said.
Debra Burlingame with her late brother Charles "Chic" Burlingame at Christmas in 1991. (Debra Burlingame)
She said that 21 years after the "surreal nightmare" on 9/11, she still thinks about Chic and cherishes trips she has made on American Airlines, where his former crews would tell her stories about his time in the air.
"I can't tell you how many great stories I heard about my brother that I'd never heard before. I had to fly American a lot. I was constantly flying back between LA and Washington. But I flew with all the crews that he flew with, and they would come sit down with me and tell me stories about him. And it was wonderful. He was a very good pilot. He had great respect for the crews, all of them, including the guys in the back," she said.
Burlingame told Fox News Digital that she and her other brothers always looked up to Chic and even into adulthood, they would ask: "'What would Chic do? What would Chic think? Go get Chic, he'll know what to do.’"
Charles "Chic" Burlingame as a young boy with a plane he built by himself as a surprise for his parents. (Debra Burlingame)
Burlingame, who serves as the 9/11 Community Leader on the board of directors for the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation, lamented the current political state of the country and that a generation will never understand how Americans united after the horrific day more than two decades ago.
"What I'm seeing now politically is sad because to see the country so torn apart on so many different levels, not just politically but ideologically on so many issues. And it's sad for me when I think of young people who were either not born or too young to remember or have any memories of 9/11. They are growing up in a country in which they have no idea what it's like for Americans to be standing shoulder to shoulder embracing each other and being kind to each other," she said.
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"It's just angry, divisive and even brutal. And that's very sad for me. It's very, very sad because I've told people over and over in interviews that 9/11 was a triumph of human decency over human depravity. And that's really what saved me and a lot of family members from utter and complete despair. Our fellow Americans were magnificent. They really were. And they kept us from crumbling."
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