Gainesville Airport's 9/11-Named K-9 Retires After 8 Years on the Job

A working dog’s last shift

Gainesville Regional Airport’s explosives-detection K-9, Beamer, retired Friday after eight and a half years of service, U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack announced during a ceremony at the airport marking the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. For Nature Coast travelers who route through Gainesville, the nearest full-service commercial airport for much of Levy County, Beamer has been part of the everyday security screen behind the ticket counter for nearly a decade.

Beamer’s handler, airport Security Coordinator Jason Berger, said the dog came to the United States from Colombia under the name “Caddy” and completed a 20-week training program in New Smyrna Beach before the pair graduated together in 2018. Berger said Beamer topped her training class.

Named for a Flight 93 passenger

The dog’s name is not incidental. Berger named her after Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Flight 93 who was among those aboard the hijacked plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001, after passengers and crew stormed the cockpit. Investigators have documented that four hijackers, two pilots, five flight attendants and 33 passengers were aboard that flight, and that 13 people made 37 phone calls before the plane went down. Todd Beamer’s call to a GTE operator, in which he relayed information about the hijackers, ended with the phrase “Let’s roll”, words that became shorthand for the passengers’ decision to fight back.

Berger said he contacted Todd Beamer’s widow, Lisa, for permission both to name the K-9 after her husband and to stitch “Let’s roll” onto the dog’s working vest. “I personally started using the phrase ‘let’s roll’ as much as I could” after the attacks, Berger said, adding that naming his K-9 partner Beamer was an easy call once the department needed a name.

A rare congressional honor

At Friday’s ceremony, Cammack presented Beamer with a congressional challenge coin, the first such coin given to a K-9 in six years, according to the congresswoman’s office. Cammack, who regularly passes through the Gainesville airport traveling between north central Florida and Washington, D.C., said she is reminded of Flight 93 each time she sees a memorial plaque bearing Todd Beamer’s name in the Capitol. “I always think about Beamer here at home,” she said.

What changes at the airport

Beamer’s retirement ends her active duty as one of the airport’s explosives-detection dogs, a role that supplements screening done by the Transportation Security Administration. The airport did not detail through WUFT whether a successor K-9 has been assigned or is in training. Gainesville Regional Airport serves as a regional gateway for Levy County residents flying beyond the Nature Coast’s limited commercial options, making staffing and security changes there relevant well beyond Alachua County lines.

Berger said Beamer will move into retirement having spent her working life reinforcing a link between an ordinary airport security post and one of the defining moments of Sept. 11, a connection Cammack said she does not expect Gainesville travelers to forget.