In September 2008, seven years after the terror attacks that claimed his life, Jeremy Glick received a recognition that no ceremony could fully capture. The United States Judo Association (USJA) awarded him an Honorary 10th Degree black belt, the highest rank the organization can bestow.
According to sources, the inscription on the accompanying plaque read: the USJA had promoted Glick “for living the principle of judo, ‘mutual welfare and benefit,’ sacrificing his life for our country.”
For those who knew Glick, the honor was entirely fitting.
Glick was a National Collegiate Judo champion during his years at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. He graduated in 1993, having also captained the university’s rugby team and served as president of the Rochester chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. He was, by every account, a man who stepped forward rather than stepped back.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Glick, then 31, was aboard United Airlines Flight 93, bound for a company sales meeting. He had originally been scheduled to travel the day before.
When four men hijacked the plane shortly after takeoff from Newark, New Jersey, Glick and several fellow passengers gathered information through cell phone calls and quickly understood the nature of what was unfolding across the country. They made a decision.
His last words to his wife, Lyzbeth, were: “We’re going to rush the hijackers.” He then hung up the phone.
The passengers’ collective attempt to retake the aircraft is believed to have forced the hijackers to abandon their intended target, widely believed to have been the U.S. Capitol or the White House. The plane came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, with no survivors.
Those who knew Glick were not surprised he was at the center of the effort. His brother-in-law, Douglas Hurwitt, put it simply: “That was my brother-in-law. He was a take-charge guy.”
Wife Lyzbeth Glick spoke about her late husband’s judo background, saying she had no doubts that he played an active role in subduing the hijackers.
Glick had married Lyzbeth, his high school sweetheart from Saddle River Day School, in 1996. The two had been prom king and queen together in 1988.
Their daughter, Emerson, was born on June 18, 2001, less than three months before her father’s passing. Named after the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, she later delivered a TED Talk in 2017, as a high school sophomore, on navigating tragedy and grief.
In 2002, Glick was awarded the Medal for Heroism by the Sons of the American Revolution, that organization’s highest civilian honor. That same year, he received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.
In 2019, his hometown of Rochester inducted him as the 182nd member of the Rochester Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, an honor accepted on his behalf by his parents, Joan and Lloyd Glick.
His sister Jennifer founded Jeremy’s Heroes, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping financially disadvantaged young athletes access training and, in her words, “find their inner heroes” through sport.
