Heartbreaking 9/11 voicemail from plane reveals victim’s final words to his wife moments before tragedy
Every year, Brian Sweeney's final voicemail resurfaces as Americans remember the nearly 3,000 people killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Sweeney was a passenger on United Flight 175, the plane that was hijacked and crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
Before the crash, he used a seat-back phone to call his wife, Julie Sweeney Roth.
The message he left has since become one of the most remembered personal accounts from the attacks, but Sweeney's life before that morning is less widely known.
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Sweeney's wife was teaching when she was pulled from her classroom to answer a call from her mother-in-law, Louise. She was told Brian was aboard a flight that had been hijacked.
When Julie later returned home, she found a message from her husband on the answering machine.
"Jules, this is Brian. Listen, I'm on an airplane that's been hijacked. If things don't go well, and it's not looking good, I just want you to know I absolutely love you.
"I want you to do good, go have good times. Same to my parents and everybody, and I just totally love you, and I'll see you when you get there," he said.
The 9/11 Memorial & Museum has preserved the message in its collection. Speaking in a video for the museum, Julie recalled hearing Brian's voice and said: "I'm thankful for it. So thankful for that message. Because at least I know, without a shadow of a doubt, what he was thinking."
She added that the calmness in his voice soothed her as she described the message as 'very powerful'.
According to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, Sweeney had been a pilot and instructor for the United States Navy before later working for a defence contractor.
The job allowed him to mostly work from home.
Sweeney and Julie eventually settled on Cape Cod after getting married there, with Julie previously recalling that she and Brian met at a bar in Philadelphia.
According to Newsweek, she remembered him standing apart from the men wearing suits, instead dressed in a cap and denim shirt.
She also said she immediately told a friend, 'that's the kind of guy [she] would marry'.
At 6'3", Brian made an impression. Julie described him as 'a force to be reckoned with'.
On September 11, 2001, that ordinary morning changed when Brian's flight was taken over by hijackers and ultimately struck the South Tower in New York City.
Julie has since remarried and had two children. She remains connected to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, where she works as a volunteer.
More than two decades later, Brian's final words remain part of the public record, preserved not simply as an account of the attacks, but as a final message from a husband to his wife.
Thomas Bamford