Cross is dedicated near Flight 93 site

As hundreds of firefighters bowed their heads in prayer, a cross made out of steel from the World Trade Center was dedicated Sunday near where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into the ground on Sept. 11, 2001.

The 2-ton, 14-foot-high cross sits on a concrete base shaped like the Pentagon at a fire station in Shanksville, Pa., a few miles from where the plane crashed into a field. The cross made a 311-mile journey from Brooklyn on Saturday, accompanied by hundreds of motorcyclists, many of them current or retired New York firefighters.

“We wanted to find a home for this steel,” said Paddy Concannon, a retired lieutenant from the Fire Department of New York. “This is an effort on our part to tie the three events together: the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville.”

The cross is not part of the official $58-million Flight 93 National Memorial. That memorial will be built in phases and is expected to about 40% complete by the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

The Flight 93 crash killed all 40 passengers and crew members.

The flight, which was en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, was the only one of the four planes hijacked that day that did not reach its intended target, believed to be in Washington.

Investigators think passengers who rushed the cockpit caused the hijackers crashed the plane near rural Shanksville, about 65 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.