Ground broken for Flight 93 National Memorial

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November 10, 2009

CNHI News Service

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. – Ground was finally broken Saturday for the nation's newest federal memorial, a $58 million tribute to passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a remote field here the morning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

“We made it. We made it,” Gordon Felt, president of the Families of Flight 93, told a couple hundred people at the site of the long-planned memorial. But not to the finish line, he said, “certainly not to any semblance of closure."

With a hearty “Let’s roll," mimicking passenger Todd Beamer’s call to action aboard the ill-fated jet, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar dug in his shovel along with two dozen others. They included four young family members of the fallen heroes, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and architect Paul Murdoch.

The memorial is scheduled to be complete on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, in 2011. It eventually will include a 40 wind chime "Tower of Voices," a visitors center, marble plaza and maple trees.

During the groundbreaking Salazar recalled the tragedy of Sept. 11, when terrorists hijacked four U.S. airliners, steering three into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

Flight 93 was presumably headed toward another Washington target when passengers wrested control from its hijackers.

“For the first time ever, the enemies’ purpose was to kill innocent civilians,” said Salazar.

He recalled the sacrifices of 40 innocent passengers and crew aboard Flight 93. “They saved the lives of countless innocent people," he said. "They did not cower before fear.”

Information for this story was provided by The Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown, Pa.