Visiting the Flight 93 Memorials!

Yes I said memorials because there are two memorials for the Flight 93 crash on 9/11. The one is the big multimillion dollar official one and the other is the privately funded “Flight 93 Memorial Chapel. The official memorial is at the actual crash scene and it is very polished and somewhat sterile when compared to the make shift memorial that sprang up almost overnight right after the crash. Yes there are small examples of what was left but nothing like what was there in the first few years after the crash. Just recently the Tower of Voices was completed. This is really big wind chime that is supposed to represent each of the passengers and crew that .died in the crash. Each of the chimes were suspended individually and were restrained so they could not bang into the support structure. Unfortunately on the day of our visit the maintenance crew was mowing and trimming the area around it and it was impossible to hear the chimes over the din of two lawn mowers and a weed eater.

The second memorial is the Flight 93 Memorial Chapel which was started by a Jesuit Priest who at one time was a chaplain at Christiana Hospital in Delaware. Father Al as everyone called him was a remarkable man and his project will live on even though he passed away several years ago. The last two times that I was in the area the chapel was closed and one could only imagine the worse that could happen after Father Al passed away. I can’t describe the peace I felt to see the doors open this time and that there are actually a small cadre of volunteers that help maintain the facility. We were allowed to ring the Freedom Bell which I believe was donated by one of Father Al’s friends in the Delaware area. another new feature that is in place now was a metal sculpture that Father Al designed but did not get to see itap completed. I believe it is called into the fire and it represents the four planes that crashed that day and it is beautiful. It is designed to be movable and as the bottom part goes up the planes come down. If you are in the area you should really try to see this memorial which is located just outside of Shanksville, PA. Besides the Chapel, United Airlines has placed a tribute to the crew of Flight 93, there are benches to rest on that have the names of all the passengers engraved on them, a steel tribute that has been carved into a piece of steel that came from “Ground Zero” in New York.