[Rhodes22-list] Flight 93

[Brad Haslett]

Back to work everyone, the holiday is over!  Top video of the the 4th (IMHO)
was the largest re-enlistment ceremony in the history of the voluntary
military. This may be the best 'American Spirit' observation.  Brad

-----------------------

American spirit reflected in the brave deeds on Flight 93

C. Fraser Smith

July 6, 2008

SHANKSVILLE, Pa.
<http://ad.doubleclick.net/click;h=v8/36f6/0/0/%2a/n;205464596;0-0;0;12925001;4307-300/250;26648283/26666140/1;;%7Eokv=;rs=10024;rs=10034;rs=10043;rs=10044;rs=10053;rs=50021;rs=50048;ptype=ps;slug=bal-opfraser06jul06;rg=ur;ref=baltimoresuncom;pos=1;dcopt=ist;sz=300x250;tile=1;%7Eaopt=2/0/ff/1;%7Esscs=%3fhttp://www.historictriangle.com/>
<http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/trb.baltimoresun/news/opinion/editorial;rs=10024;rs=10034;rs=10043;rs=10044;rs=10053;rs=50021;rs=50048;ptype=ps;slug=bal-opfraser06jul06;rg=ur;ref=baltimoresuncom;pos=1;sz=300x250;tile=1;ord=18620609?>
I made my long-delayed Flight 93 pilgrimage a week before July 4 this year.

This is where the United Airlines plane crashed on 9/11. It's the final
resting place of 40 passengers and crew, some of whom apparently overwhelmed
a group of terrorists - in all likelihood saving lives and national treasure
in Washington, D.C., the terrorists' target destination.

I've always marveled at the story: the image of ordinary people accepting
what surely they feared would be a fatal challenge. On my brief visit, I
learned there was even more to the story.

Before they acted, they made a plan - and then they voted on it. That's what
we do in our country. We vote. That's what we've fought and died for from
the beginning.

I wasn't thinking about the Fourth of July when I got here, but the acts of
the Flight 93 passengers are the kinds of brave, selfless acts we remember
on this holiday.

"We've decided we're going to do something," one passenger told his wife on
the phone. "We're not going to just sit here."

"What can I do?" she asked.

"Just pray," he said.

"This doesn't look good," another passenger told his father by phone. "I
don't think we're going to get out of this."

As many know, Todd Beamer, one of the passengers, shouted, "Let's roll," as
the counterassault began. I would add that two-word battle cry to the
nation's list of defiant refusals to live in thrall to any threat - whether
king or dictator or terrorist.

The passengers had learned of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World
Trade Center. They also learned that their own plane, Flight 93, was on its
way to Washington.

No one knows exactly where the hijacked plane was headed. One of the
terrorist planners had delayed and delayed, apparently waiting for Congress
to resume its business. Was the Capitol their third target? Or was it the
White House?

"We know it wasn't a field in Pennsylvania," says "Ambassador Kathi" (she
declined to give her last name), one of the U.S. Park Service volunteer
guides who, every hour or so, take visitors through the final minutes of
Flight 93 for visitors. Transcripts of phone conversations and other
material were used to re-create the drama.

Every passenger's name can be found etched into benches or on other
memorabilia at the temporary memorial. In a sense, these men and women had
been deputized by the fates to defend their countrymen and their country's
national monuments.

One passenger had been a stewardess. On the phone with her husband, she
spoke calmly, as if all her disaster training had kicked into action. One of
the callers spoke as if he were dealing with a problem at the office.

Another was a pilot. He'd never flown a jumbo jet, but he would try. If the
others could get him into the cockpit, he would do his best. He would need a
lot of hand-holding from the air controllers, he said - as if he'd get his
chance to work a miracle.

Kathi, a nurse, now spends most of her time describing the last minutes of
Flight 93 to visitors and recording oral histories from everyone involved in
the events that followed the plane's crash. Some 385 of these accounts have
been compiled so far. Two men at a nearby scrap heap felt a large shadow
passing overhead just before the crash.

Assuming that many Americans would want to visit the site, some in
Shanksville decided to be part of the remembrances. "There needed to be a
point of human contact," Kathi said.

More than 125,000 people have come to the still largely barren site every
year. They and their children leave an assortment of tributes: religious
medals, crosses, toy cars, dolls and peace signs. Schoolchildren built
benches for the visitors, engraving them with the names of the 40
passengers.

As part of the memorial, there will be a walkway approximating the final
descent of the plane. Visitors will be able to walk where the plane struck
the ground. There will be wind chimes and a 93-foot "Tower of Voices."

>From the day of the crash, this land has been consecrated - hallowed and
preserved as a memorial to those who voted, perished and rolled into
history.

C. Fraser Smith is senior news analyst at WYPR-FM. His column appears
Sundays in The Sun. His e-mail is fsmith at wypr.org.