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San Francisco (AsiaNews) - “My name is Betty Ong, I’m number three on flight 11”. It has been 25 years since that call was made whilst the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11 – which would lead to the first attack of 11 September 2001 – was already underway.
Betty Ann Ong, a flight attendant born and raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown, was the first person to raise the alarm about what was happening on board one of the four hijacked planes that day. And today, her memory lives on thanks to a community centre and a foundation named after her.
“The cockpit isn’t responding. Someone’s been stabbed in business class and – I think there’s tear gas – we can’t breathe. I don’t know, I think we’re being hijacked,” she told the airline’s reservations centre in Raleigh, North Carolina.
She remained on the phone for 23 minutes, providing the operators with information about the injured passengers, the hijackers’ location and the situation inside the aircraft. Shortly afterwards, at 8.46 am, the Boeing 767 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre.
That phone call helped the US authorities grasp the scale of what was happening. The information provided by Ong and the other crew members was used to piece together the hijacking, and the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the closure of US airspace for the first time in the country’s history.
A girl from Chinatown
Betty was born in San Francisco on 5 February 1956, the youngest of four children in a Chinese-American family. Her parents, Harry Ong Sr. and Oy Yee-gum, ran a dried meat shop on Jackson Street, in the heart of Chinatown. She and her siblings were third-generation American citizens; both sets of grandparents had emigrated from China after the First World War.
On the morning of 11 September, she was not supposed to be on that flight. She had agreed to work an extra shift to save up the money needed for a trip to Hawaii she was organising with her sisters. Two days earlier, she had written to her sister Cathie saying she was working hard so that she could go on the trip with them. On 9 September, she had agreed to stand in for a colleague on the 11th.
When the five hijackers took control of the Boeing flying from Boston to Los Angeles, Ong was at the back of the aircraft. Her position enabled her to quickly make contact with ground staff. The phone call would become one of the most important pieces of evidence in piecing together the first few minutes of the attack.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the Ong family had no idea that Betty was on that flight. Confirmation came from American Airlines only later. It was also only later that the family discovered that Betty had been one of the people who had raised the alarm from inside the aircraft. In 2002, some of Betty’s remains were recovered from Ground Zero and identified through DNA testing. She was 45 years old. Her remains were then laid to rest at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California.
The memory of a community
For San Francisco’s Chinese-American community, Betty’s death was not confined to the national commemorations of 11 September. On 21 September 2001, around 200 members of the city’s Chinese community gathered in a small park in Chinatown to remember her. The service was also attended by Mayor Willie Brown, who proclaimed that day ‘Betty Ong Day’.
In the years that followed, the community sought above all to ensure that Betty’s name remained linked to the neighbourhood where she had grown up. This campaign was spearheaded in particular by Reverend Norman Fong, a childhood friend of the Ong family and, for many years, executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Centre, an organisation dedicated to supporting low-income residents and defending affordable housing in Chinatown. Fong spoke of his frustration that, in the early years following the attacks, Betty’s role had remained in the background of public memory.
In 2011, the Chinatown community centre that Betty herself had attended as a child was named after her. To secure support for the proposal, the family collected over 3,000 signatures in just a few days from local residents and Betty’s colleagues.
The centre’s original building had been constructed in 1951 and for decades had been one of the main recreational venues in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In 2008, the city’s voters allocated over 21 million dollars for its renovation. The new Betty Ann Ong Chinese Recreation Centre, which opened in July 2012, covers approximately 2,250 square metres, with over 900 square metres of outdoor space. It comprises a gym, an arts and crafts room, a weight-training room, multi-purpose spaces, a children’s playground and an outdoor basketball court.
Today, the City refers to it as ‘Chinatown’s Backyard’: a space where children, families and older people can play, take part in sport, join in activities and socialise. The centre’s programme includes, amongst other things, basketball, badminton, volleyball, table tennis, mahjong, Zumba and activities for older people. The centre also hosts after-school programmes for local children.
It is precisely this everyday character that sets the centre apart from a mere memorial. Betty’s name is now associated with a place used daily by the residents of Chinatown, particularly by those families and older people for whom public gathering spaces are especially important. In an area where many residents have very limited private space, the centre has been described by the community itself as a sort of ‘living room’ for the neighbourhood.
The Betty Ann Ong Foundation, established by her sister Cathie in 2002, has also chosen to channel the memory of the young flight attendant into community-focused initiatives. The foundation states that its primary aim is to help children and the elderly, through programmes dedicated to healthy eating, physical activity and wellbeing. In Bakersfield, where it is based, it organises an annual summer camp that can accommodate up to 150 children; in San Francisco, meanwhile, it supports the activities of the leisure centre named after Betty.
According to the foundation, Betty had a particular soft spot for children and the elderly: whilst working as a flight attendant, she would make a point of spending time with them and showing them attention; and when she lived in the Boston area, she would even drive for half an hour just to have lunch and go for a walk with some elderly people. She would tell the neighbourhood children about her travels and bring them little souvenirs.
Betty’s memory has thus become intertwined with the broader history of San Francisco’s Chinatown. In 2022, the city’s Chinese Culture Centre included her amongst the twelve ‘heroes of the Asian-American community’ depicted in a large public mural on Jackson Street, alongside other figures, including Norman Fong himself.
For the reverend, the recognition of Betty has also taken on political and civic significance. In the years following 9/11, the Asian-American community was in fact hit by a wave of suspicion and hostility; Fong himself recounted being insulted in the street and told to ‘go back to China’. In 2021, he stated that ‘until America sees Chinese-Americans as Americans too, we still have a long way to go’.
