On eve of 9/11 anniversary, Flight 93 gets national memorial

Cathy Stefani, of San Jose California, puts a teddy bear at a flag angel bearing the name of her daughter Nicole Miller who was one of the 40 passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 killed when the aircraft crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania after being hijacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001. AFP File Photo

SHANKSVILLE—The 40 passengers and crew of the fourth, often forgotten 9/11 airliner are to be honored Saturday, the eve of the 10th anniversary of the attacks, on the daisy-dotted field where they died.

Thousands are expected outside this village in southwestern Pennsylvania for the dedication of phase one of a national memorial to those on United Airlines Flight 93 who foiled an apparent bid by Al-Qaeda hijackers to strike Washington.

Then-president George W. Bush, on his third visit to Shanksville since September 11, 2011, is scheduled to attend, along with Vice President Joe Biden and former president Bill Clinton.

Nightfall will see the solemn lighting of more than 2,900 luminarias in memory of all 9/11 victims.

On Sunday, President Barack Obama is to join a two-hour commemorative service at the spot where Flight 93 went down — lifting the profile of a virtually forgotten episode of the 9/11 attacks.

Security will be tight, after the Federal Aviation Administration declared a no-fly zone up to 18,000 feet over Shanksville, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Washington, for much of Sunday.

So far, the Flight 93 National Memorial comprises a “field of honor” that gently descends to the crash site, plus a visitors’ plaza.

Future plans call for a memorial wall by 2014, a grove of 40 trees and, in time, a 93-foot (28-meter) “tower of voices” comprising 40 wind chimes — although $10 million still needs be raised before the project is done.

Several days of heavy rain which triggered floods in much of Pennsylvania this past week forced organizers to alter the staging of this weekend’s events, although fairer weather is forecast from mid-day Saturday.

Notwithstanding a Hollywood movie, the story of Flight 93 has largely been overshadowed by the destruction of the World Trade Center and the direct hit on the Pentagon.

In-flight recordings pulled from the rubble revealed how the passengers and crew, aware of the World Trade Center attack from mid-air cellphone calls to loved ones, fought the four hijackers for control of the Being 757.

The plane crashed in a fireball at 10:03 a.m., hitting the ground at 563 miles (906 kilometers) an hour, just 20 minutes’ flying time from its presumed target, the Capitol building. Everyone on board died instantly.

In the aftermath of 9/11, local volunteers took on the task of greeting visitors and maintaining a makeshift memorial along the chain-link fence that overlooks what some call “America’s first battlefield against terrorism.”

The 2,200-acre (890-hectare) site has drawn up to 6,000 people a week in the summer months, with an uptick seen this year, said Marlin Miller, 78, a retired Methodist pastor who is one of the volunteer guides.

“The story’s not about Shanksville, but what brave people (aboard Flight 93) did that day,” he told Agence France-Pressw on Friday, as a steady drizzle failed deter several dozen people from coming off the nearby Interstate 70 to pay their respects.

“We planned on coming up and we picked today to come. Tomorrow will be a bit busier,” Bill Irwin, 36, a farm-fencing salesman, told AFP alongside his wife Wendy, 35, and their four home-schooled children.

The Irwin family had discussed Flight 93 the night before, Wendy Irwin said, “and we cried a lot. It was very emotional … We cried over what people did on that flight, what they did for our country.”

The new memorial is not without its detractors, however. In the local Daily American newspaper, opponents of its design took out a large advertisement to allege that its curved format resembles the Islamic crescent, facing Mecca.