SHANKSVILLE, Pennsylvania — Visitors to the Flight 93 National Memorial are getting a first look at artifacts that have spent years inside the park’s storage collection. The National Park Service wants to offer a more personal glimpse into the lives of the 40 passengers and crew members killed on Sept. 11, 2001.
The new displays are part of park enhancement projects funded by a $2.3 million anonymous donation made through the National Park Foundation.
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“The only thing they asked was to enhance the visitor experience leading up to 9/11,” said Stephen Clark, superintendent of the National Parks of Western Pennsylvania. “When visitors come here to Flight 93, they feel the spirit of not only the 40, but all 2,977 of those individuals and remember what happened that day, and to come together, continue to be united for our great country.”
Park enhancements with meaning
From the Memorial Plaza below to the Tower of Voices above, much of the money has already been spent on 13 separate projects, all aimed at preserving the memorial and enhancing the visitor experience.
“We retrofitted the Tower of Voices, where instead of having wind speeds of 11 to 15 miles an hour to activate a strike, we were able to have it retrofitted down to about 5 to 7 miles an hour, so visitors are likely to hear a strike when they go to the Tower of Voices,” Clark said.
Fresh stain now covers the weather-worn plaza, restoring its bold black color chosen to honor the area’s coal mining past.
“Down below in the plaza, we were actually able to power wash and then stain,” Clark said. “Fifteen years, the sun, and the elements take its toll, and it is literally night and day. So now it’s all a vibrant black. It’s absolutely beautiful.”
New lighting and painting guide visitors through the site, while trails have been reworked to connect in a loop.
Bringing their stories to light
The donation has also allowed the park to bring rarely seen artifacts out of storage.
“We purchased exhibit cases, roughly $100,000 to purchase five exhibit cases,” Clark said. “They have to be of the highest quality because we were able to bring objects from our storage collection that would never have seen the light of day due to security and the environmental impacts. But we have on display objects that the visitor would never ever see.”
Among them are the jacket worn by lead flight attendant Lorraine Bay and the jacket and day planner of Rich Guadagno, a refuge manager with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
“You see his day planner opened up to Sept. 11, where it says annual leave,” Clark said. “It’s just really, really striking.”
Each object offers a glimpse into who these 40 people were in life — not just in their final moments.
“There’s a lot of sadness here at Flight 93, but there’s a lot of laughter,” Clark said. “There’s a lot of joy because we tell who these people were in life, what their hobbies were, talking about their children and their families and what they loved about this country.”
The next generation
The story of what happened on United Flight 93 is becoming history for a whole new generation, which is why memorial leaders are expanding exhibits, preserving newly acquired artifacts, and finding new ways to tell the story of the 40 passengers and crew.
“More than 100 million Americans were born after 9/11, so they had no vivid memory whatsoever,” Clark said. “Our job, not just with the National Park Service, but just Americans in general all over the world, is to, as they say, never forget. How do we do that? We teach about the courage. We teach about who these individuals were in life.”
The theme of this year’s commemoration is “The Next Generation,” featuring student musicians, a countywide children’s chorus, and new education programs aimed at middle school, high school, and college students who have no memory of that day.
Clark said the story of Flight 93 also offers a lesson in ordinary people responding to an extraordinary threat.
“Trying to get back the plane was not done by Navy SEALs, or SWAT members, or Army Rangers, but just regular people going about their business. Civilians,” Clark said. “It was the first counterassault on terrorism by civilians, and that’s what’s so remarkable about this story.”
25 YEARS LATER, HOW DO YOU TEACH 9/11 TO A GENERATION WITH NO MEMORY OF IT?
For a generation that never experienced Sept. 11, the memorial is preserving more than the story of how 40 people died. Through the artifacts now on display — a singed concert ticket, a driver’s license melted to the side of the plane — visitors are now given powerful reminders of how they lived and the ordinary details of lives that were cut short.
And 25 years later, those personal reminders may be among the most impactful to make sure the people of Flight 93 are remembered not just as names on a memorial, but for who they were.
