Volunteers Step Up For Flight 93 Memorial
Standing in the blazing sun, Judy Brant talks to a crowd holding up a
plastic binder filled with photos and newspaper articles. As she flips
through the pages, the crowd inches closer drawn in by the images and
her words.
"These are the photos of the 40 passengers and crew," Brant says. The
crowd falls silent as she narrates. "The flight was delayed leaving New
Jersey. The passengers were served breakfast. And the plane was not hijacked until it was close to Cleveland about 46 minutes into the flight."
A retired school teacher and speech therapist, Brant is an "ambassador"
who tells the story of United Flight 93. She's one of 45 volunteers
educating visitors about the flight that crashed on September 11, 2001 after its passengers and crew fought against terrorists forcing the plane down.
The Shanksville, Pa., crash site is both peaceful and full of anguish.
The small gravel lot in the middle of a field features a 40-foot-long chain
link fence with hundreds of mementos paying tribute to those who died just a few hundred yards away. Among them:
• Two pairs of army boots. One soldier left a note saying: "These boots
carried me across Afghanistan and now I leave them here to honor you."
• A flight attendant's uniform left by her fellow flight attendants
• Children's toys, police and firemen's patches, helmets and uniforms
• A handwritten note that says: "We were at work on Capitol Hill that
Tuesday. Thank you."
While Brant narrates the story of Flight 93, some visitors sit on
benches etched with the victims' names. Others read messages carved in memorial stones erected at the site. Many sigh deeply as they look across the field toward the fenced-in crash crater marked by a lonely American flag. Only the victims' family members are allowed at the Sacred Ground; the crater left by the plane's impact that has been backfilled. The silence here is deafening only periodically broken by the wind and visitors' hushed voices. The small parking lot doubles as an extension to the temporary memorial. Visitors have written hundreds of messages on the guardrails - someone left a bumper sticker that reads: "Terrorists are cowards."
"I really take pride being up there talking about the people on the
plane," Brant says. Like many of the area residents, she feels a special bond with the victims "since they died here so close to us in our backyard."
More than 130,000 visitors come here annually. More than 25,000 tributes have been left at the temporary crash site. The items are left on
display but before the weather damages them the ambassadors carefully collect and preserve them. The "ambassadors" are the most visible examples of the grassroots efforts to build a national memorial on 2,200 acres surrounding the crash site by 2011.
"We have literally spent hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours from
the community and from the families," says Joanne Hanley, Flight 93 National Memorial superintendent.
The official effort to build a national Flight 93 memorial started in
October 2001. Local community leaders decided to hold a town meeting
about pursuing a permanent memorial. Such a memorial would change a lot of things- it would bring more people and traffic to this out of the way
community the locals had cherished for generations. Some 200 people attended the meeting listening to presenters who worked on the Oklahoma City Memorial.
Soon after that Congressman John Murtha introduced legislation to make the crash site into a permanent national memorial in March 2002. While establishing a new national park or memorial normally takes years, this legislation flew through Congress passing unanimously; President Bush signed it on September 24, 2002.
Meanwhile, the locals had their hands full attending to the temporary
memorial.
"There was no one there initially," says Donna Glessner, who helped
start the Flight 93 Ambassadors program. She says the locals were concerned about the unanswered questions and the misunderstandings the visitors were leaving with. "So together we decided we needed to staff the place. "
The first ambassadors began in January 2002 on weekends seeking warmth in their personal cars between visitors. As the weather improved they branched out to Fridays and Mondays. "Pretty soon we were there every day of the week," says Glessner.
Those involved in the permanent memorial attribute their quiet success
to teamwork. The four partners in the project - Families of Flight 93, the
federal Flight 93 Advisory Commission, the National Park Service and the Flight 93 Memorial Task Force - have done everything through extensive volunteer committee work. They have a dedicated conference call line that's in constant use. "We have to do it by night because all the volunteers have other jobs during the day," says Hanley.
The volunteers are deeply appreciated by the family member of the Flight
93 passengers and crew.
"The fact that these citizens have stepped up to the plate with the type
of commitment they have demonstrated is the greatest honor to the dead and the survivors," says Hamilton Peterson, former president of the Families of Flight 93.
On the eve of the sixth anniversary of 9-11, the families and all the
volunteers are one step closer to a permanent Flight 93 memorial. They
have an approved plan (http://www.flight93memorialproject.org) that keeps the project on track to open in 2011.
For Dale Nacke, whose brother Louis "Joey" Nacke II died on the flight,
the memorial and its volunteers embody the American spirit. The suburban Atlanta resident says: "Never sit down. Never go down without a fight. Be proud,be strong, be brave. And that's the message I think it sends. "
Liisa Hyvarinen is a freelance multimedia journalist and on adjunct
faculty at University of South Florida and University of Tampa. She also served as Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Hyvarinen can be reached at www.SilentScreams.tv
