Flight 93 Memorial: "Let's Roll!"

The Third and last component of our September 11 memorial quest is in Western Pennsylvania near a village named Stoystown. A larger town just a few miles farther away is named Shanksville and is forever part of the Flight 93 story since it has a more media-friendly name. The town of Shanksville  also had the nearest first responders and appeared onsite within 15 minutes of receiving the first 911 call from a resident in the area.

The Flight 93 Memorial is some 140 miles west of Harrisburg, where we're staying, but we had two motives for driving that far. First was our desire to honor the heroes on Flight 93, and the second was to meet friends that flew in from near our hometown on the west coast to have lunch with us! Well, not quite. They attended a family wedding in Ohio a few days ago, and are on their way to visit one of their sons in southern Pennsylvania, so we had to see them, and the Memorial was right on the way for them.

Within the Visitors Center, a timeline explains exactly what happened, when it happened, and how the events related to the horror in New York and at the Pentagon. For us, the most poignant part of the display was the area where we could hear the voices of the people aboard Flight 93 calling their loved ones, knowing that they would not survive the next few minutes. Very moving.

Flight 93 left Newark, NJ, on the morning of September 11, 2001 with 44 passengers and crew, including 4 hijackers. At 9:28, after word reached the passengers and crew of the attacks on the World Trade Center Towers, the hijackers overpowered the cockpit and took control of the plane. They moved the passengers and remaining crew to the rear of the plane and ordered them to sit down. After less than 30 minutes, after several of the passengers and crew contacted their families, a plan was developed to retake control of the airplane. The hijackers had already changed course toward the US Capitol Building and believed that they were in complete accordance with their original plan, but they did not plan on the extraordinary bravery of the passengers, who rushed the cockpit and began to scuffle with the hijackers. During the fight, the plane turned completely upside down and dropped from over 10,000 feet elevation to an impact in an abandoned strip mine at over 500 miles an hour with more than 7,000 pounds of fuel aboard.

The incredible impact left a gaping hole in the ground and ignited nearby hickory trees.

The impact area has been groomed to return it to it's original appearance. Below, in a photo taken from the observation deck at the Visitor's Center, shows the Wall of Honor, placed in alignment with the flight path of the plane. The deep indention in the edge of the forest indicates where trees were set on fire from the explosion. Only family members are allowed on the path to the crash site, where a large boulder is placed at the exact location of impact.

Donna, Rosemary, and Ed on the observation deck with the impact site behind them. Ed and Rosemary  visited the crash site within a month of the incident, and again several years later. They were impressed with the facilities that have been built to memorialize the crash.

For Donna and I, this visit to the Flight 93 Memorial was a necessary part of our understanding of the events of that horrible September day. A long drive? Sure, but a short journey in our minds as we remembered hearing and seeing the stories unfold. The passengers and crew of Flight 93 are indeed "ordinary heroes", as they made a decision in a few minutes to devote their lives to our country. Evidence shows that the plane was headed for the US Capitol Building, where the Congress and Senate was in session, so these brave citizens saved an unknown number of people, and prevented the terrorists from obtaining the satisfaction of another damaging blow to the country.