PR Pro Dies a Probable Hero

Mark Bingham was a successful, well-liked public relations executive who represented major companies like 3Com and Internet startups to the media, including PC World. He became a victim of the terror that struck the United States on the morning of September 11. And he just may have been a hero who helped keep America's newest day of infamy from being even more devastating.

Bingham, 31, was a passenger on United Flight 93, which left Newark, New Jersey on Tuesday morning. The plane, one of four cross-country flights seized by hijackers, was diverted from its scheduled destination, San Francisco. Three of those planes struck icons of American power--the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon--with calamitous results. The fourth plane, Flight 93, crashed in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

Reports indicate the plane's passengers, aware of the World Trade Center disaster, plotted to overcome the hijackers and prevent them from crashing it into another target, even if it meant a certain death for those aboard. Among the possible intended destinations: the White House, the Capitol, or Camp David.

The flight's black box flight recorder, which could provide definitive evidence of what happened in the plane's final moments, was located Thursday. But Bingham's friends and colleagues are fondly remembering an assertive, physically imposing former rugby player with determination to take on terrorists.

Likely Hero

"We'll never know for sure, but absolutely he'd be there," believes Holland Carney, former president of PR firm Alexander Communications (now merged with Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide), who gave Bingham his first PR job in the mid-1990s. "This is a guy who beat up guys who mugged him. He was just the type to say 'I'm not going to take this.' He stood up for other people. He was just a guy who was very comfortable with his body, very strong and large...I'm sure he whispered to someone: 'I bet we can take these guys.'"

Confronting hijackers wouldn't have been out of Bingham's character, agrees Rad Sundar, chief executive officer of VARstreet, one of Bingham's clients.

"He was extremely dynamic, chop, chop, let's move, let's get this done," Sundar says. Yet Bingham was an engaging, genuinely likable PR pro who journalists enjoyed working with.

"Mark Bingham was one of my favorite public relations professionals," says PC World senior editor Michael S. Lasky. "He was intelligent, radiated an infectious joie de vivre, and exhibited a remarkable common sense about handling his clients' business."

At the time of his death, Bingham headed The Bingham Group, a San Francisco public relations firm that represented 3Com and other clients. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, he was selling cell phones when he got into the PR field in the mid 1990s at Alexander Communications. He worked in a San Francisco office located, coincidentally, in the same building as PC World's headquarters.

Friends in Shock

"He was probably one of the more generous, courageous, and inspiring people we ever worked with," says Alexander founder Pam Alexander. "We all stayed in touch with him after he left. Our whole company is in shock." Later, Bingham worked at Burston-Marsteller and 3Com before founding his own company.

"He was just a constantly moving source of energy," remembers Ken Montgomery, a former colleague who now works at an orphanage in Africa. "I have this feeling if you were to talk to people there might be ten people who would say Mark was my best friend...Mark was living his life to the fullest this summer, traveling and [he] just got done running with the bulls in Pamplona [Spain]."

According to The New York Times, Bingham was heading to San Francisco for a client meeting on Tuesday afternoon. He'd originally planned to make the trek on Monday, but hadn't felt well. On Tuesday morning, he overslept yet managed to board the flight minutes before departure.

When the hijacking commenced, Bingham was one of several passengers who managed to place phone calls to loved ones on the ground. He called his mother, Alice Hoglan, told her of the crisis and that he loved her. He didn't mention a plan to confront the terrorists, but reports of phone calls by two other passengers, Thomas Burnett Jr. and Jeremy Glick, say that the men told their wives that the biggest and burliest passengers intended to do so. The 6-foot, 5-inch Bingham would likely have been among them: "He doesn't look that huge," Sundar says, "but he is."

His Style: Taking Action

"It wouldn't surprise me that Mark Bingham, who was totally fearless, would try to storm the cockpit of that plane," says Judy Curtis, The Bingham Group's first employee. "He would enlist other people and encourage them to act, and that's what he did so well."

Just what happened remains unclear, but excerpts from cockpit tapes suggest a scuffle took place shortly before the crash. According to CNN, the recording captures someone shouting "Get out of here!" repeatedly. Then, in broken English, a voice said, "There is a bomb on board. This is the captain speaking. Remain in your seat." Shortly thereafter, the plane went down near Pittsburgh; 45 passengers and crew members died.

The Bingham Group will continue its work without him.

But former employer Carney isn't so sure that the public relations profession has lost Mark Bingham. "We've been joking that Mark, wherever he is, is working the media," she says.

"Nobody worked harder," Carney says. "The guy really, really worked and he really loved what he did. He never complained."