Days after Lt. Col. Robert J. Hymel died tragically in the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon, a man who had seen Hymel’s name among the victims attended the funeral and introduced himself to Hymel’s wife, Pat.
Approximately 29 years earlier, the man pulled Hymel from the wreckage of a Vietnam plane crash, saving his life. The two men lived just 20 minutes apart – a fact unknown to one another. They never reconnected.
It was an extraordinary detail about an extraordinary life, and a tragic death. Hymel, a Norco native, retired after nearly three decades in the military, but was called to work at the Pentagon for his strategic expertise. The Pentagon was being renovated at the time of the attack – Hymel was scheduled to move to a different section of the building that would not have been hit.
This month marks the 25th anniversary of the tragedy. His family has lived with the pain ever since. Louis Authement of Luling helped Hymel’s widow chronicle her story in a new book set to be released this week.
The book is a memoir about the life of Beatriz “Pat” Hymel Lipinski before, during and after her husband’s death. The book is titled Yoked: A couple’s true cross-bearing journey through great evil to a greater good. Authement said the title is a reference to the fact that all people have burdens to bear that represent one’s individual cross, but that the burdens are not meant to be carried alone – they are meant to be joined, or yoked, to someone else’s burdens so that the combined weight of those crosses is easier to bear.
About 19 years ago Authement attended a reunion of the 1964 graduating class as a then-member of the St. Charles Catholic School Board. There, he met Robert Hymel’s twin sister Mary, who was standing alone.
“She looked incredibly sad and lonely. I introduced myself and asked if everything was OK,” Authement said. “And she looked at me and her eyes were watering, and she said no, everything’s not OK … I just wish my brother could be here with me.”
Authement asked why her brother was not there.
“The floodgates just opened, and she told me her brother died in the Pentagon,” Authement said.
They spoke for some time, and it inspired Authement to want to tell his story. First, he raised enough money to build a 40-foot memorial tower in Hymel’s honor at St. Charles Catholic.
But as he developed a connection with Lipinski, he realized he wanted to tell Hymel’s story from her perspective.
“Resonating in the back of my mind was just that all of it happened from Pat’s perspective as much as Bob’s perspective,” said Authement. “And I started to feel like there was a spiritual dimension to this and it could only be told through her because she’s still here to tell it.”
Authement said that Lipinski battled through the emotions of it all each time they talked – she cried during each interview, but summoned the strength to speak about Hymel, their life together, the tragedy and the aftermath.
“She’s a very resilient person,” Authement said. “And through the whole process, burdens kept coming up. Her whole life was defined by burdens. When she was a young girl, when she was a young woman, when she met Bob, when they got married, when he got shot down and almost died.
“Together, Bob and Pat had unbelievable burdens. They were able to bear them together, more than the sum of what each could have done individually.”
While serving in Vietnam, Hymel was the lone survivor of a plane crash that occurred when his aircraft was hit by two missiles. This was witnessed by another pilot from a group of nearby crew buses. That pilot rushed to the wreckage and pulled Hymel out.
Authement noted that it’s believed that Hymel was trying to rescue a woman trapped in the building when debris struck his head, resulting in his death.
His friends and neighbors knew Hymel as a humble and down-to-earth individual, Authement said, someone willing to bend over backwards to help others. He was a deeply religious man and “an All-American good guy.”
Lipinski told Authement that the first two years following Hymel’s death were devastating as she battled severe depression. Her daughter eventually convinced her to get out and begin meeting people – she ultimately would meet her second husband, Ed Lipinski, who had recently lost his wife. His wife was buried in Arlington – one section away from Hymel, another extraordinary coincidence.
The book also chronicles how Lipinski has devoted her life to helping young children and in particular young women, helping them navigate through things she struggled with during her life. It is an example in practice of one of the book’s themes, that although great evil exists, great good can emerge from it. The book also wrestles with the theological question of how a loving God can allow something as evil as a 9/11.
Yoked will be published by Palmetto Publishing and be available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million and other online retailers.
