Upstate New York and Canada: Shanksville and Flight 93 (9.11.24)

Dave realized, on September 10, 2024, that we were just four hours drive from Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where a hijacked plane headed for the Capitol was forced down by its passengers on September 11, 2001.  We decided to visit the Flight 93 National Memorial on September 11, 2024.

We waited for 90 minutes in a traffic jam outside Shanksville, as Presidents Bush and Trump and their vice presidents were ushered in and out of the monument for their own ceremony.  Those dignitaries had also visited the 9/11 monument in New York City earlier in the morning.

The monument was austere, with heavy granite slabs in light gray and black.

A mowed field marked the flight line where the plane had flown over the spot where the monument now stands, and had crashed near the trees.

We visited the wall where the names of all the passengers and crew members who died in the crash were listed.

We were asked to participate in the flag ceremony, held once per year on 9/11, memorializing the crash.  The designer of a special Flight 93 flag led the ceremony.

We gathered around the huge flag, holding it and, one by one, expressing our feelings.

The man leading the ceremony asked the oldest veteran to fold the flag.  That was Dave, who was an Air Force officer during the Viet Nam War, during the 1970s.

After the flag ceremony, the man who organized it gave Dave a smaller copy of the Flight 93 flag to remember his experience.