SF rugby team, friends raise toast to honor Bay Area 9/11 hero Mark Bingham
"Let's raise a toast to the myth, the man, the legend Mark Bingham."
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- "Let's raise a toast to the myth, the man, the legend Mark Bingham."
It has been 21 years since the September 11 attacks, and rugby teammates of a 9/11 hero continued a tradition of honoring Bay Area native Mark Bingham by raising a toast to him.
Bingham was a division one rugby player at UC Berkeley and one of the passengers who fought the hijackers of Flight 93.
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"We heard about the plane going down and we were just devastated. I think we all sort of had the feeling that if he could have done anything he would have - he was that kind of person. And I remember that night going and kind of saying goodbye," said Cameron Geddes, a teammate of Bingham and founder of the San Francisco Fog Rugby Football Club.
"He had a favorite quote from Shakespeare, 'With you, be luck with you, we band of brothers,"'' he said.
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"What Mark did was such a heroic act and even the rugby community is being celebrated - as not just a person who did it but who was a gay rugby player." said Dany Samreth, a coach at the San Francisco Fog Rugby Football Club.
"When we started, there were only four gay-inclusive rugby teams around the world and his act of bravery was basically a call to revolution - because there's now a 100+ teams that are gay-inclusive," he said.
"This is the reason we came today - to celebrate him - even though we've never met him before...to know that this guy helped in such a big way - it makes me so proud to be here," said rugby player Javier Olguin.
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"I cried all that day, I don't know. I don't it's just painful, I'm sorry," said John Silverman, a San Francisco resident.
The pain still fresh --- and the memory of Bingham living on.
"He's a hero in the neighborhood. I mean, whether I knew him or not, he was heroic and well-liked around here," he said.
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