Honoring Heroes in a Pennsylvania Field – Flight 93 National Memorial, Shanksville PA [October 10, 2018]

Visitors Center walkway that follows the flight path of the doomed flight

Where were you on September 11, 2001?  For many of us, that question triggers a sweep of sad and difficult memories.  The Flight 93 Memorial is a thoughtful, powerful testament to the 40 brave men and women who caused their flight to crash less than 20 flight minutes short of its target in Washington, DC.

The flight path was through the openings in the panels, with the balcony overlooking the crash site

When you arrive at the memorial, you walk down a sidewalk into the Visitors Center, marked with the times of impact of the other 3 flights into the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon.  The walkway follows the flight path of Flight 93 as it crashed.  When you continue walking to the end, you stand on a balcony cantilevered over the hillside, looking directly at what was once the crash site.

The plane flew from here...

...to here.  The boulder marks the crash site.

The Visitors Center has a serpentine exhibit that talks about the context of these attacks, the attacks themselves, news coverage, and Flight 93 and its passengers.  You pick up telephones and hear the messages left as passengers called their loved ones, hearing panic, grief and resolve in their voices.  You watch videos of our national leaders and hear their healing words around the terror of the times and later at the dedications of different aspects of the Memorial.  You learn about the immense effort by the FBI to collect tiny pieces of debris, including human remains, and piece together what actually happened and who was there.  We saw the credit card owned by one of the terrorists which led to the unraveling of how these attacks were financed.

Wall of Names

From the Visitors Center you can walk a .7 mile path to the Memorial Plaza, walk along the 1 mile Allee to the Plaza, or drive to the Plaza.  The Plaza borders the crash site and debris field which has since been filled in and is marked by a boulder in a field.  The remains of the passengers and crew are still in that field, and their names are written on a wall that continues the course of the flight path as it was marked from the Visitors Center on the hill above.

The Tower of Voices

Unlike other Memorials that we have visited, this one feels very new.  There are young trees along the Allee and drive, which you can imagine will one day be lovely mature groves.  The brand-new Tower of Voices has 8 of the 40 planned wind chimes whose simple melodies greet visitors at the entrance from the highway.  Somehow, this newness gives more power to the Memorial.  It has been created to honor a tragedy and sacrifice that happened during OUR lifetimes, and to tell the story in the future to people who did not live through it, so that it should never be forgotten.

Wind chimes

On personal notes: Jim, Pat, Sheryl and Mike, you shared that day with Dana.  She remembers the smell of jet fuel from the Pentagon a few miles away, the constant sirens, the phones not working, and the gridlock as terrified commuters fled DC driving through Arlington. Russ remembers Shannon running into his office telling him to go to the conference room, that a plane just crashed into the Twin Towers.  Where were you on 9-11?