Flight 93 Memorial - With Words

Flight 93 Memorial

My last entry was different than most, because it was just pictures and nothing more. However, the power of visiting the Flight 93 National Memorial left me speechless. Words cannot truly describe the raw emotion felt while visiting the area. Even as I sit here typing this, I find it hard to put down the words that truly describe the way I felt while visiting.

Setting out one cool morning with two relatives, we went in search of the newly dedicated memorial just north of Shanksville. I'm not going to go into the events of that infamous day; as Americans, the events of September 11 and the aftermath are engraved in our minds and on our hearst - life as we once knew it changed that day and I don't need to go into it to tell you what you already know.

Three of the four planes found their mark that day. One of them, due to the courage of the passengers and crew fell to the Earth, far from its intended target in Washington, D.C.

The crash site, and location of the memorial, is just south of Route 30, between Bedford and Somerset. The large signs announcing the location along Route 30 cannot be missed. Turning onto the drive to the memorial, the reality of the sacrifice made suddenly came to mind. Hearing and reading about it is one thing; to me, it suddenly it became even more real than it had been before. Now it wasn't just words being said and read; it became a piece of history that could be touched, that could be seen, that could be fully taken in by all of the senses.

While only the first phase of the memorial was finished, I personally found it to be more moving than most of the fancy memorials of any type that I've ever been to in the past.

Upon parking, we were greeted with a number of sign boards that told the story of Flight 93 on that fateful day. I took time to read about the flight, the crew, and the aftermath here at a lonely field in southwestern Pennsylvania. After reading the signs, I stepped into a small building that had a bulletin board for visitors to post their thoughts and memories. I took the time to sign the logbook there and read a handful of the memories pinned to the board.

Steeping outside, it was time to take the walk to the memorial itself. A black walkway crossed the solemn landscape to the wall that was built on the plane's path it took as it plunged to the ground. The wall is so simple, yet so powerful. Forty slabs of white granite, each with the name of one those heroes aboard the flight that day, form a wall of remembrance.

The small plaza seemed void of noise as I stood there. Each name suddenly having even more meaning as I remembered the ultimate sacrifice that they made that day. Each name becoming a hero in my mind, something that they did not set out to be that day, yet have since become so in the minds of countless Americans.

When I say words cannot truly describe the way I felt as I stood there, I truly mean it. The mixed emotions of love and hatred, of courage and cowardice, of the ultimate sacrifice made by people willing to try and do something rather than sit back and allow those who despised us take control. No words could come out to fully describe those mixed emotions.

As we move forward, we can never put aside the cowardly attacks that occurred in the United States that day, but here, here in a remote part of Southwestern Pennsylvania, we can take pride in memorializing and remembering those who died taking a stand against those terrorists that day. May their ultimate sacrifice never be in vain, but remembered for generations to come.