Remembering Mark Bingham

A humanizing anecdote about the gay man whose heroic actions on 9/11 changed some hearts & minds

September 11, 2025

Mark Bingham is seen in a personal photo that became famous post-9/11. (Image via fair use)

When I was writing my oral history of Mandate Magazine and the Mavety Media empire for Esquire.com, I was fascinated when Michael O'Connor, an editor for the softcore magazines, revealed he knew Mark Bingham — the gay 9/11 hero — as a discreet writer of erotica for the publications.

“He wrote for me,” Michael said. “He sent in something, and I don’t know if he called me or I called him, but it sounded too good to be true — he [was] at Berkeley, captain of his rugby team, president of his fraternity and he’s writing these gay stories.”

What is an editor of dirty fiction to do?

“I gave him my number and he called me at home and he said, ‘My name isn’t blah-blah-blah, it’s Mark Bingham.’”

According to Michael, he received “a long, long letter from him about trying to come to terms with being gay, not disappointing his mother, having a girlfriend, thinking about a guy when he was [with] his girlfriend.”

One detail that everyone who was ever closeted will relate to: “[Mark] got some other guy to receive his [comp] magazines [in the mail] so he wouldn’t get them at his frat house.”

It was too brief an anecdote to make the cut in the piece, but I felt it was a sweet and relatable insight into his life.

On September 11, 2001, Mark, Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick led a group hoping to regain control of United Airlines Flight 93, which had been hijacked and was probably going to plow into the Capitol or even the White House. They succeeded in thwarting the hijackers' ultimate plan, even breaching the cockpit, but the plane was rolled sharply and went down in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing Mark, 36 other passengers and the 4 hijackers. ⚡️