Soon after United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field in western Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, residents from the surrounding Somerset County honored the memories of those killed.
They brought flowers to pay tribute to the 40 passengers and crew members who died while diverting the hijacked plane from Washington, saving numerous lives. (Investigators believe the terrorists had planned to crash the Pennsylvania plane into the White House or the U.S. Capitol, where legislators were in session.) In all, almost 3,000 people were killed that day at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Virginia and in the crash in Pennsylvania.
Connie Stevanus, who lives so close to the field where Flight 93 crashed that she found mail from the plane’s cargo hold in her yard, is one neighbor who escorted visitors to the temporary memorial that sprung up. “From the beginning, we just took it to heart,” says Stevanus.
She is among the many Somerset County residents who now volunteer at the permanent Flight 93 National Memorial, opened in 2015. A U.S. National Park, the memorial sits along U.S. Route 30, hours from the World Trade Center site in bustling New York and the Pentagon near federal Washington, the places where the three other hijacked planes crashed.
On the anniversary this year, the Flight 93 National Memorial again will honor the 40 passengers and crew by reading their names and observing a moment of silence. The public is invited to the ceremony, which also will be live-streamed to classrooms across the country.
The White House has announced that President Trump will visit the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, on this 24th anniversary of the attacks. That memorial honors the victims of American Airlines Flight 77, with 184 benches, each engraved with a victim’s name.
And at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York, family members will read the names of those killed in the World Trade Center attacks and in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That evening, the “Tribute in Light” will continue a tradition of commemorating the twin towers with beams of light shining into the sky.
Though it is in a more rural locaton, the Flight 93 National Memorial in Somerset County has attracted some 350,000 visitors who have paid respects to the passengers who fought to retake the plane before the crash. Stevanus expects visitors to keep coming from all over the world, on the anniversary and after. “A lot of them [will] well up with tears,” she says. “They’re as affected as the whole world was that day.”
Near the entrance, the 93-foot (23-meter) tall Tower of Voices welcomes visitors with the sound of 40 wind chimes, to calm them before they learn about the details of the crash, including recordings of passengers’ phone calls.
High concrete walls flank a black granite walkway that follows Flight 93’s final path. Beside the impact zone are 40 marble panels, each inscribed with one passenger or crew member’s name.
The entrance to the hallowed ground is distinguished by a gate of hemlock wood, chosen because the flight crashed into a grove of hemlock trees. A large sandstone boulder marks the crash site.
Access to the gravesite is limited to family members. “It was very important for us as family members to immediately protect this sacred ground,” says Gordon Felt, whose brother — Edward P. Felt, a computer engineer from New Jersey — was a passenger on Flight 93. Nearby, Felt will find that the locals embrace that need wholeheartedly.
