LeRoy Wilton Homer Jr. (August 27, 1965 – September 11, 2001) was the first officer of United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked as part of the September 11 attacks in 2001, and crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all 37 passengers and seven crewmembers, including LeRoy. Early life Homer, son of a West German woman and an American soldier who was stationed in West Germany, grew up on Long Island in New York. He was one of nine children, and seven of his siblings were girls. As a child, he assembled model airplanes, collected aviation memorabilia and read books on aviation. Whenever the family held events where men weren't invited, his father would take him to McArthur Airport where they would watch the planes takeoff and land. He was 15 years old when he started flight instruction in a Cessna 152. Working part-time jobs after school to pay for flying lessons, he completed...