Unfinished business remains at crash site
SHANKSVILLE, PA. — There was unfinished business on the eve of Sept. 11.
Yes, the president was expected to visit Shanksville on Sunday to commemorate the 10th anniversary of that tragic day.
And thousands from across the globe would turn out to the field in rural Pennsylvania where the 40 passengers and crewmembers of United Airlines Flight 93 overtook hijackers, crashing the Washingtonbound jet into Shanksville.
But as the sun rose on Sept. 10, a permanent memorial to the heroes of Flight 93 waited to be dedicated. Flight 93 did not land on government property or a mecca of business, but in people’s backyards, in a small town that heard a “boom,”
that marked a great transformation in America.
It took years of wrangling and more than a 1,000 design proposals before ground could be broken on the first phase in November 2009.
On Saturday afternoon, that granite plaza was dedicated by former Presidents GeorgeW. Bush andBill Clinton, as well as Vice President Joe Biden.
Bush called the heroic revolt aboard the doomed aircraft “the first counteroffensive of the war on
terror.”
“One of the lessons of 9/11 is that evil is real,” he said. “And so is courage.”
Bush, Clinton, and other speakers likened the actions of the Flight 93 passengers and crew to those at the Alamo, Thermopylae, and Lexington in the RevolutionaryWar.
“But this is different,” said a tearful Clinton. “Your loved ones just happened to be on a plane. With almost no time to decide, they gave the entire country an incalculable gift. They saved the Capitol from attack…They saved the terrorists
from claiming the symbolic victory of smashing the center of American government. And they did it as citizens.”
Clinton announced that he and U.S. House Speaker John Boehner will launch a bipartisan effort in Washington raise the $10 million needed to completely fund the memorial.
The first phase of the $60 million memorial, unveiled Saturday, is Memorial Plaza, where the names of the fallen 40 are inscribed following the flight path of the plane.
By 2014, the U.S. National Park Service plans to build large walls to frame the sky where the flight passed, as well as a visitor center and a “Field of Honor” encircled by tree groves.
The final phase is the 93-foot“Tower of Voices” where 40 windchimeswill tinkle forever as the voices of the victims.
Keith Newlin, superintendent of the National Park Service, said he was not disappointed that the memorial wasn’t complete for the 10th anniversary of the attacks.
“We’ve had land issues, and that’s fair,” Newlin said. But, “This is not an urban or a city environment. You can hear wildflowers rustling back there. You can see hemlock groves swaying a bit.”
Gordon Felt, president of the Families of Flight 93, lost his brother Edward to Sept. 11. “With each additional visit I have here, and see construction coming to completion, and I can’t tell you how pleased I am,” he said.
Nearly 800 family members were expected back for the dedication ceremony, though some still find it too painful. “Every year on this anniversary it opens a wound that we feel deeply,” Felt said.
And no memorial would heal that wound, Biden acknowledged.
“They were already heroes to you. They were the father that tucked you in bed at night. They were the wife who knew your fears before you even expressed them. They were the brother that lifted you up. They were the daughter who
made you laugh, and the son who made you proud,” he said. “They’re irreplaceable … no memorial and no
words and no acts can fill the void that they left in your hearts.”
And with that, Shanksville swallowed hard, blinked back tears, and was ready to meet Sept. 11.
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