08/19/2026
On Saturday morning, at Boston’s 9/11 Memorial in the Public Garden, a man leaned into an airline beverage cart and started walking. Destination: Ground Zero, New York City, more than 200 miles away.
His name is Paul Veneto. Paulie, to everyone.
He was a United flight attendant based in Boston, and from 1997 he was regularly assigned to United Flight 175, Boston to Los Angeles. He flew that route the day before September 11, 2001. He was off the next morning, when Flight 175, carrying the crew he loved, was hijacked and flown into the South Tower.
“I flew with every one of these guys,” he says.
The loss nearly destroyed him. Veneto fell into a nearly 15 year battle with opioid addiction before getting free of it in 2015. Then he found his mission: making sure the world never forgets the flight crews of September 11, the people he calls the first, first responders, who faced the hijackers with no warning, no weapons, and no chance.
So he pushes a beverage cart, the tool of his trade, along their flight paths. In 2021, Boston to Ground Zero for United 175. In 2022, Washington Dulles to the Pentagon for American 77. In 2023, Newark to Shanksville for Flight 93, 300 miles. In 2024, Boston to Ground Zero for American 11. More than 750 miles, one man and a cart, cheered through town after town.
Now comes the last one. When Paulie’s cart reaches Ground Zero by September 11, 2026, the 25th anniversary, it will have traveled more than 1,000 miles. His team brings extra carts so people in many of the towns along the way can push beside him, and the final miles will be shared with members of the 9/11 community walking at his side.
Source: Repost from
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