Pa. town remembers Flight 93

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. – Esther Heymann was overflowing with grief for her stepdaughter. Standing in a blustery snow, overlooking the empty field where 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’d come out, asking Heymann whether 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 earth and sky tragically collided in these rolling fields Sept. 11, 2001, the people who live here and the relatives of the 40 passengers and crew killed suddenly were and inextricably brought together. That bond will be sealed further today when ground is broken here 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.