A Hero Named Betty
America did this week what she has done since September 11, 2001, stop to remember and reflect on the unthinkable events of that day. This day has become a lot like November 22, 1963. People remember where they were and what they were doing when the horror of that day began to unfold. We rightly pay homage to all the first responders, the police, and firefighters, who ran into the towers as terrified New Yorkers ran toward safety. So many never made it back out. We remember average citizens, helping other average citizens, people who just hours before, were beginning what they thought would be just another day at work. Nevertheless, amazing Americans did amazing things all over the nation that day.
Many of those amazing feats began thousands of feet in the air after hijackers took over the planes. We all know the story of United Airlines Flight 93. Were it not for those average citizens banding together and taking a stand, the consensus is that Flight 93 would have made it to what many believed to be its intended target, the U.S. Capitol. But often, we forget the one person who, essentially alerted the nation, to the first steps in what would eventually take place that day. Her name, Betty Ong.
Betty, 45, was a seasoned flight attendant of 14 years with American Airlines. She was working the flight that morning so she could get home to Los Angeles and meet up with her sister. They were preparing for a much-anticipated vacation to Hawaii. The hijackers struck just minutes into the flight of American Airlines Flight 11. Thanks to Betty’s quick thinking, as the terrorists were distracted by terrified passengers, she managed to get to the back of the plane and get to an airphone. Betty called the American Airlines reservations center and began telling the first person who answered the phone what was happening. We have all heard Betty’s steady voice telling the operator that the cockpit would not answer the phone, someone had been stabbed, and that, “I think we’re getting hijacked.” Betty would stay on the line with the reservation center for the next 20 minutes, giving vital information about who the hijackers were, until the line went silent, and the plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Betty’s phone call would lead to the total closure of American airspace that day. Betty’s heroism is honored every year on September 11, but who was she?
It turns out that September 11 was not the first time that Betty fought back against the bad guys. Betty was born in San Francisco and was the youngest of the Ong’s four children. Usually, when you are the baby of the family, you learn quickly to be scrappy. Betty was no exception. In the 1980s, Betty’s parents owned a grocery store in Chinatown. She worked there with her sisters. In those days, Chinatown was not the safest of places and saw a lot of gang activity. One day gang members came into the store intending to rob them and demanded that Betty hand over all the money. She refused, and it was then that one of them pointed a gun at her. Not budging, Betty kept telling them to leave the store. They did just that. Betty’s brother Harry summed it up saying of Betty, “She’s not fearful.”
Wanting to help others seemed to just be who Betty Ong was. In 1987, after witnessing a roll-over car crash, Betty stopped to help the woman trapped inside the car. It was someone Betty had just met a month before. Jo Ellen Chew, the woman in the car, described Betty’s “courage, kindness, and compassion.” Betty began working in the airline industry at Pacific Southwest Airlines in the baggage claim department. She then worked as a ticket agent at Delta Airlines and became a flight attendant in 1987. Betty’s colleagues also described her kindness and compassion. Harry Ong said that they told the family that during flights, it was Betty who paid special attention to children and senior citizens. Harry also described Betty as being “the jokester of the family.”
As Betty’s heroics on that terrible day have become more well-known, she has received many honors. Her siblings started the Betty Ong Foundation, which works to prevent childhood obesity, in addition to many programs for children and seniors. Kind of the way Betty would have wanted it. But many felt there needed to be something more to honor Betty, something right in the heart of the community where she grew up. The Chinese Recreation Center in Chinatown has been there since 1951 and provided a whole host of programs for the surrounding neighborhood. Around the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Center had been renovated. Rev Norman Fong is the former executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center. In 2011, he began to get support to name the newly renovated center after Betty. Shortly before that tenth anniversary, with the help of the Ong family, the Center was named after Betty.
In 2021, on the heels of the COVID-19 epidemic, places with large Asian populations like San Francisco, saw a sharp increase in anti-Asian violence. Malcolm Yeung is the current executive director and said that he felt that, in such a time of heightened incidents of violence against Asian Americans, places like the Betty Ann Ong Rec Center were important parts of the community.
Betty Ong never got to take that Hawaiian vacation with her sister, and she left behind a fiancé. But on a day when we remember so much sadness and tragedy, it is a good thing that we also have the stories of people like Betty Ong. An average American who just went to work on September 11, 2001, but surely impacted countless numbers of lives. That is probably just how Betty would have wanted it.
