Bingham to be honoured

14 April 2012

Nobody knows the details of the heroism that must have caused United Airlines Flight 93 to plummet into a disused Pennsylvania strip mine on 11 September 2001, killing all on board but probably saving thousands of other lives. Yet everybody who knew Mark Bingham understood instinctively that he was one of the heroes.

Ten minutes before the plane crashed, Bingham, the 31-year-old owner of a public relations company, had rung his mother Alice and explained in a voice full of tension. "Hi, mom. This is Mark Bingham. I just wanted to say that I love you. I am on a flight from Newark to San Francisco, and there are three guys on board who've taken over the plane and they say they have a bomb."

What happened next in those last few minutes can never be known yet what is certain is that a group of the 37 passengers decided to take their destiny into their own hands.

Perhaps sensing that the hijackers had earmarked another high-profile landmark such as the Presidential retreat at Camp David, the last words from one passenger to a relative over the phone were: "We're going to do something". Another was heard to utter famously "Let's roll".

That Mark Bingham was among them is not remotely open to doubt. "It wasn't in his nature to take guff from anyone. He was courageous, larger than life," his friend Bryce Eberhart recalled. Bingham was a man who seemed to fear nothing. He had run with the bulls in Pamplona and once wrestled to the ground a gunman who tried to mug him in the street in San Francisco.

Then there was his rugby. As a 6ft 4in, 220lb powerhouse No8, his colleagues on the University of California XV which twice won the national title always looked to Bingham when the going got tough.

"He was a man you wanted on your team, always willing to take charge if things weren't working right," said Eberhart. "He played with a smile but would hit like a freight train!"

Then, as Americans celebrated the heroes of flight 93 as the first true US symbols of resistance in their war against terrorism, they discovered another thing about Mark Bingham. He was gay.

To his friends, this was irrelevant. He wasn't a gay hero; he was just a hero. Others, though, felt he should be held up as a role model, a shining example of a gay man who became a hero.

Perhaps the only thing that was important was that Bingham united his nation and the gay community within that nation in fierce pride.

Eberhart said: "His actions on Flight 93 confirmed what we had known all along - that is, whenever people do noble things, there will be gay people among them. His actions were a definitive statement about the need for tolerance in our culture."

So it was that Bingham became an icon. Yet, of all the honours to commemorate him these past three years, from the Arthur Ashe Courage Award to the gym named after him in San Francisco, the biggest and most remarkable memorial is to be found in London this weekend.

Bingham, a pioneer of the gay rugby scene as a player with the San Francisco Fog, has given his name to the Bingham Cup, effectively a world championship for teams made up mainly of gay and bisexual players, which will take place at Esher rugby club.

The sheer size of one of the world's biggest single-site rugby festivals - it will feature 27 teams and 650-plus players from around the world, watched by crowds of up to 3,000 - is testament to the explosion of interest in the sport in the gay community which has been largely inspired by Bingham's name. The Rugby Football Union support it, United Airlines have provided financial backing and mum Alice has flown in to present the trophy on Sunday.

The tournament, a huge success in San Francisco two years ago, seeks to promote rugby as a non-discriminatory sport, an aim Bingham did much to secure. Just before he died, he had celebrated the Fog's breaking down of the barriers to gain admittance to the Northern California RFU.

"We have the chance to be role models for other gay folks who wanted to play sports but never felt good enough or strong enough," he once wrote to his team-mates. "We have the chance to show the other teams in the league that we are as good as they are. Good rugby players. Good partyers. Good sports. Good men."

One Fog team-mate, pondering what must have happened on Flight 93, had this recurring image of Bingham on the rugby field. "We'd kicked the ball, and there were 15 people between Mark and the guy who caught it. Mark would duck down his head and go through the crowd fearlessly and then tackle that guy."

It will be a weekend to remember a good rugby player and a good man.

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