Flight 93 National Memorial

Former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton were gone by the time my wife and I arrived at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania today. The ceremonies were concluding and the families of the heroes from Flight 93 individually walked from the memorial wall, down the path where Flight 93 made impact. As they were departing they walked through the midst of the crowd of roughly 4,000 to gentle, sustained, respectful and heartfelt applause. Part of the crowd spontaneously, and softly, broke out into America The Beautiful. Flight 93 National Memorial Park is roughly 15-20 minutes off of the Somerset exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and I'm sure that many will add this stop to their travel agenda. I didn't need to hear the words from the speakers on the dais, moving as I'm sure they were, for I just wanted to be in the spot, or as close to it, to where this remarkable group of people struck back at terrorism before the terrorist's day of infamy was even over, very similar to those pilots who got off of the ground at Pearl Harbor before Tojo's planes could leave the islands. What happened on that flight, and the aftermath of it, could never have been envisioned by the terrorist minds involved. As the crowds were waiting for buses to take them back to the parking areas, I had the grand idea of walking up and over the field, meeting up to the road and then back to Route 30 where our car was parked on the berm of the road. A couple miles into the forced march back I had regretted subjecting my wife to this trek and we still had a couple of miles to go. The line-up of departing automobiles was long and slow and at times we walked faster than they inched along,  As one vehicle with two men inside passed, the driver asked if we wanted a ride. I'm the type that if I was stranded on a deserted island and a cruise ship spotted me and tried to rescue me I would say, "Only if I can work for my fare," but I looked over at my wife and then said "thank-you very much." The driver offered us a fruit drink as it was bumper to bumper out of the park but a great relief to us and we asked these two men a few questions on where they were from and why they had come. They were two of the four children of Flight 93 passenger Joseph Driscoll whose widow and many other family members were in other vehicles. I realized that they were probably emotionally spent and tired themselves but I did ask some questions about that fateful day and they very politely replied. One of the sons had been working in the World Trade Center only the day before the attacks and vividly described the scene on the New York City streets. His father would have been in the air on Flight 93 at that time. How typical of what I had heard of these families of the Flight 93 heroes, that they reached out to help others after they themselves were hurt and here they were doing it again on this special day.