9/11 crash site brings healing

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. | Esther Heymann was overflowing with grief for her stepdaughter. Standing in a blustery snow, overlooking the empty field where United Airlines Flight 93 had crashed a couple of years earlier, she couldn’t stop crying.

The only other person there was a local man, sitting in his warm car. Every few minutes he would come out, asking Mrs. Heymann if she was OK; mostly, he just let her grieve. Alone.

Finally, the man approached her. His wife was making soup at home. She should come and have some, get warm, wait for the snow to stop.

She did, following a man she didn’t know through streets that to him were his neighborhood.

To her, they were the roads leading to her loved one’s cemetery plot.

When the jetliner crashed into these rolling fields on Sept. 11, 2001, the people who live here and the relatives of the 40 passengers and crew killed were suddenly and inextricably brought together. That bond will be sealed further on Saturday, when ground is broken for a national park, a permanent memorial to the victims and a permanent reminder to the locals.

“The families of victims of Flight 93 and the community of Shanksville have really become one community,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who helped broker agreements between landowners and the government for the memorial land.

The community began to help immediately after the crash. Victims’ family members were brought to a nearby ski resort and attended to by local Red Cross volunteers. School students held a candlelight vigil on the courthouse steps.

Bob and Phyllis Musser, who live near the crash site just past a thick grove of trees, brought turkey sandwiches and coffee to the first responders. They would later volunteer to man the temporary memorial and talk to visitors.

Known as Flight 93 Ambassadors, the volunteers are locals who noticed people showing up at the crash site with no idea what they were looking at. More than 130,000 people visit every year.

Featuring a 93-foot tower containing 40 wind chimes, the $58 million memorial to be built on 2,200 acres here will guide visitors on a path to the crash site, known simply as the “sacred ground.” It is expected to open in 2011, the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

The Mussers volunteer weekly at the temporary memorial. Bob, 79, greets visitors and Phyllis, 75, shows photos of each victim and the path of the plane from her post inside a small, gray wooden shed.

United Flight 93 had left Newark, N.J., that morning for San Francisco when four terrorists commandeered the cockpit. The hijackers turned the plane around and headed for Washington, D.C., before passengers fought back. The hijackers responded by crashing the plane into the field, just shy of a school.

The Mussers have gotten to know many of the Flight 93 families.

Many, they say, just want to come and sit on one of 40 benches at the site, each inscribed with a victim’s name.

Story Continues →