Last updated: April 30, 2026
Person
Sandy Waugh Bradshaw
Quick Facts
Significance:
Flight 93 Flight Attendant
Date of Birth:
06/13/1963
Date of Death:
09/11/2001
Age: 38
Hometown: Greensboro, North Carolina
Occupation: Flight Attendant, United Airlines
Thirty-eight year old Sandy Waugh Bradshaw, a native of Climax, North Carolina, always wanted to be a Flight Attendant, the perfect career for someone who loved meeting people and traveling. After eleven years in the field, she was now flying only two trips per month, allowing her time at home with her two toddlers, her teenage stepdaughter, and her husband, a pilot for US Airways. When faced with the hijack situation on September 11, Bradshaw called United Airlines to report the emergency and describe the terrorists. Then she called her husband in their Greensboro, North Carolina home. He recalls Sandy saying that she and others on the plane were boiling water to throw on the hijackers. As the call ended, she reported that everyone was running up to first class.
She was always smiling and laughing [...] She just would take things in stride, and just go on with life, and, and she was always trying to be happy for other people, as well as herself. And, and she started having children then she was always wanting to do things for them. [...] She just had a great personality. [1]
-Deborah Waugh Rash, sister
Left: Sandy and Phil Bradshaw on their wedding day. Right: Sandy with her family. NPS/FLNI-00759.
She loved traveling. She loved dealing with people and she had always wanted to be a flight attendant. [...] she went and interviewed with United prior to us getting married and she got turned down for the job. And so, then we got married and she interviewed again with a new name, and in her interview- she actually interviewed with the same lady that she'd interviewed with the time before - and they hired her this time. So it was funny. [...] I don't know what she did different, [...] we got a big kick out of it. [2]-Phil Bradshaw, husband
Left: Sandy in a gym uniform, 8th grade, 1977. NPS/FLNI-00723 Right: Sandy standing, holding the reins of a horse, 1983. NPS/FLNI-00723
She always had a really good personality, always liked to have fun, pretty much not scared of anything, the one with the, the guts and the go-get-’em. She always had a smile on her face. But now she was spunky. She could get mad in a minute. She always had lots of friends. [...] We had a lot of fun times, you know, vacations. She liked the water. She did all the sports. She was a, she was good at, at most any sport she tried. She always liked to water ski a lot. She played basketball as a child or as a middle-schooler. We always had some kind of ball going on out in the backyard: kickball, softball, basketball, something. She always liked to do sports. [...] She had horses. She had a couple horses and she rode. And she always, like I said, she liked the animals. She got her first dog when - I don’t know, I, I was little. I can remember going to pick it out. It was supposed to be a family dog, but it was her dog. She was the one that took after it. I don’t, she, like I said, she was always just, she was always into something. She was more into the sports or the activities or the social than she was interested in the school.[3] - Tracy Peele, sister
Footnotes
[1] Flight 93 National Memorial Oral History Collection/OH 116[2] Flight 93 National Memorial Oral History Collection/OH 118
[3] Flight 93 National Memorial Oral History Collection/OH 117