In Shanksville, Preserving the Memory of 9/11 and the Wars That Followed

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. — When the level crashed successful the bare tract northbound of town, the schools fto retired early. Katlin Rodriguez, 11 astatine the time, waited successful a cafeteria afloat of crying and shocked classmates for her parent and stepfather to travel and instrumentality her home. When they showed up, they had brought on a household friend. “Don’t worry,” said the friend, a teen who announced helium had conscionable enlisted. “We’re going to get them. We’re going to get the ones who did this.”

On a muggy Friday greeting 20 years later, Ms. Rodriguez, present the woman of a Marine and the parent of a 6-year-old girl, was planting American flags successful a tiny tract not acold from wherever Flight 93 went down extracurricular Shanksville, Pa. About a twelve radical were with her, each emblem they planted representing 1 of 7,049 U.S. work members who had died successful the wars that were waged since that precocious summertime greeting successful 2001.

“A batch of the kids I went to schoolhouse with, they enlisted,” Ms. Rodriguez said, looking retired crossed the field. “It made a batch of america consciousness much connected to the larger world.”

By the clip that the level went down successful Pennsylvania, the larger satellite was already reeling. The streets of downtown Manhattan were filled with particulate clouds and terror, arsenic the South Tower of the World Trade Center had conscionable collapsed. In Washington, national officials and metropolis residents were bracing for much attacks arsenic flames poured retired of the occidental broadside of the Pentagon. People crossed the state sat successful daze successful beforehand of their televisions, waiting to perceive what instauration mightiness beryllium deed next.

Unlike the Pentagon oregon the World Trade Center, Somerset County, Pa., was not a people connected Sept. 11, lone a spot that Flight 93 was passing implicit connected the mode to the terrorists’ grim nonsubjective successful Washington. People did not unrecorded successful Stoystown oregon Friedens oregon Shanksville, a tiny municipality without a postulation light, due to the fact that they wanted to beryllium adjacent the levers of planetary power.

In the archetypal six years of the wars successful Afghanistan and Iraq, according to probe cited successful a 2016 nonfiction successful The University of Memphis Law Review, soldiers from Somerset County were wounded successful enactment astatine a complaint higher than 97 percent of U.S. counties.

Staff Sgt. Brian Hause was sent to Iraq successful 2008, said Ms. Hause-Walker, who was gathering a bundle of flags to works that Friday morning. One of the flags successful the tract was for him; helium died connected a basal northbound of Baghdad.

The tract was portion of a caller commemorative tract called Patriot Park, which is astir a 3rd of a mile down the roadworthy from the Flight 93 National Memorial. That memorial, tally by the National Park Service, sits connected a quiescent expanse of much than 2,000 acres, and includes a museum, a partition engraved with the names of the 40 passengers and unit members and an unfastened meadow of thistle and goldenrod. It opened to the nationalist 10 years agone and, with the 2018 dedication of a operation of upwind chimes called the Tower of Voices, is present complete.

Donna Glessner, whose location shook upon the plane’s impact, recruited radical successful her religion to conscionable visitors astatine the tract and explicate what had happened, a radical that became the “Flight 93 ambassadors,” immoderate of whom unpaid astatine the nationalist memorial to this day. She and her sister Kathie Shaffer worked connected the National Park Service’s oral past project, interviewing hundreds of victims’ household members, authorities officials and section responders including Ms. Shaffer’s husband, the main of the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department, for the authoritative relationship of the time and its aftermath. Their lad Adam, who had ever wanted to enactment for a humanities parkland but assumed that would mean leaving his small hometown, is present the main of mentation astatine the Flight 93 National Memorial.

“I could spot a need,” said Mary Jane Kiehl, a erstwhile Flight 93 ambassador, successful an interrogation that Ms. Shaffer conducted successful 2007 for the oral past project. “I deliberation that radical needed to beryllium told arsenic overmuch accusation arsenic we had astatine that clip — the truth, you know.”

On the greeting of the emblem plantings, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan hung implicit the day’s labors; 13 flags had to beryllium added aft the termination bombing astatine the Kabul airport. It was unclear whether this was a memorial to an epoch of warfare that had ended oregon 1 that was ongoing.

Some of those successful the parkland that greeting said it would ne'er truly end, not for the radical who had been warring it implicit the past 20 years oregon for their families. There was speech of suicides, cause overdoses, a demoralizing nationalist indifference. For each grieving household represented by a emblem successful the field, Ms. Rodriguez said, determination were galore others whose lives were inactive enmeshed successful the warfare that had begun successful the aerial implicit Shanksville 20 years ago.

The household person who had greeted her successful the car that greeting did extremity up going overseas for aggregate tours, she said. Each clip helium came back, helium seemed to person changed some, becoming suspicious and fearful. “He was convinced the Taliban was inactive aft him,” she said.

She is not definite wherever helium is now. He moved distant immoderate clip ago.