This is such an amazing story. First of all, a choice was made to not have an abortion and carry a baby to term. The child, a girl, was given up for adoption. She has since gone searching for her birth parents. Sadly, she will never have the opportunity to talk to her father, because…
While searching for her birth parents two years ago, Mariah Mills found more than she bargained for: A hero of Sept. 11, 2001.
Mills’ biological father, who had given Mills up for adoption when he and his then-girlfriend were in college, was Tom Burnett, a leader of a group that fought back on United Flight 93 before it crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.
Mills, 21, learned about her birth father in 2004 – after she turned 19, the legal age in Minnesota for requesting a birth certificate with names of birth parents – and subsequent DNA tests confirmed that Burnett was her father.
“Before I was even born, my birth dad made a brave decision – to give me a life,” Mills told the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Sunday’s editions. “It was a selfless act, just like his actions on Flight 93. And, as awful as it was that he died, and I never got to know him, there is good that came out of this.”
