Another American Adventure: Flight 93 National Memorial

Monday, September 19, 2011

Flight 93 National Memorial

Today Jane (FL friend) and I went down to Shanksville to see the Flight 93 Memorial. This is the place where the 4th hijacked plane crashed on 9/11. There was a 1+ mile road leading to the memorial through the Pennsylvania hills. Very stark, reminded me of Gettysburg without all the monuments. The national park just opened to the public last week (Sept 10th). The only part finished is a long walk around the crash site itself.

There is a wall with the names of each of the 40 passengers and crew.

The site of the crash is visible just beyond the walk, but only family members are allowed to go there. It is marked with a large rock and some flags.

You can still see the red barn that is visible in the photo that was taken at the time of the crash ...

Better seen from a higher hill overlooking the crash site (where a visitors center will be built in 2014) ...

A place where visitors can write notes ...

2 comments:

BarbaraSeptember 19, 2011 at 5:03 PM
Thank you for sharing that visit with us all, Beth. Shanksville always brings tears to my eyes. It speaks of a sacrifical bravery I'd like to think is quintessentially American.
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beth cioffolettiSeptember 19, 2011 at 5:56 PM
You said it much bEtter than I could Barbara
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.