Air Force Pilot Honors 9/11 Victims
PHOTO CAPTION: Air Force Capt. Hanna Born carries a Flag of Honor bearing the names of the 2,977 victims of the Sept. 11 attacks during the 2025 Army Ten-Miler in Washington, D.C. Born was 3 years old and inside the Pentagon daycare on 9/11. U.S. Air Force courtesy photo.
Twenty-five years ago, Hanna Born was a 3-year-old inside the Pentagon's child development center when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building on Sept. 11, 2001.
Today, she's an Air Force captain and instructor pilot — and she's undertaking a 2,977-mile mission to honor every person killed in the attacks.
Born and her younger sister, Heather, who was only four months old, were safely evacuated from the daycare that morning. Hanna has described having fragmented memories of the attack, while service members and others helped move the children away from the Pentagon and keep them safe until families could be reunited.
Both sisters would eventually follow their parents into military service.
Hanna is now an instructor pilot with the Air Force's 23rd Flying Training Squadron at Fort Rucker, Alabama, where she trains future rotary-wing aviators in the TH-1H Huey. Heather became a Marine Corps officer and currently serves with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit in Okinawa, Japan.
Their mother, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Dana H. Born, served for 30 years and became dean of the faculty at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Their father, retired Marine Lt. Col. Tim Born, served 21 years on active duty.
Hanna's latest tribute began on Sept. 11, 2025.
She committed to running 2,977 miles — one for each person killed in the Sept. 11 attacks — with the project carrying through the 25th anniversary.
But the miles aren't simply a running goal.
For each one, Born highlights the name and story of an individual victim, turning the number 2,977 into thousands of individual lives to be remembered.
Her first organized run brought roughly 30 members of her squadron together before flight operations at Fort Rucker on Sept. 11, 2025. They ran 9.11 miles together.
Since then, other people have joined the effort remotely, dedicating miles of their own while following Born's progress.
Born has also carried a Flag of Honor inscribed with the names of all 2,977 victims, including during the 2025 Army Ten-Miler in Washington, D.C.
For Born, the mission also connects the generation that remembers Sept. 11 firsthand with young service members who weren't alive when it happened.
Many of the Airmen she now trains were born after the attacks.
Born said the project is less about athletic achievement than ensuring the people killed that day continue to be remembered individually.
Twenty-five years after she was carried to safety from the Pentagon as a child, she's doing that one mile — and one name — at a time.
Source: U.S. Department of War; U.S. Air Force
(Source: OAF Nation)
