Remembering the heroes of Flight 93

In the remote, rolling hills near this tiny southwestern Pennsylvania borough, signs of the thunderous jolts that shook the town on Sept. 11, 2001, and then rippled across the world have mostly faded.

The 40-foot-deep crater created by the chaotic, 500-mph descent of United Airlines Flight 93 has long been covered. Nearby, wildflowers blanket the 60-plus acres that serve as a burial ground for 40 crew members and passengers.

A serene walkway overlooks the seasonal blooms and leads to a granite wall inscribed with the names of all who were aboard Flight 93.

It took 10 years, but the National Park Service’s Flight 93 National Memorial in Stonycreek Township will be unveiled Saturday during events that are expected to draw 10,000 people, including President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

It’s been a long time coming for families of the Flight 93 crew and passengers, who were hailed as heroes for their impromptu uprising against the terrorists who hijacked their flight.

“It’s been fascinating just watching it all develop and take form and shape,” said Ed Root of Coopersburg, Pa., whose cousin, Lorraine Bay of East Windsor, N.J., was a senior flight attendant on board. “In some respects, this finished memorial is more for the future than it is for the present.”

Root first visited the site on a dreary March day, six months after Bay, a 58-year-old who was known to mother her younger colleagues, had chosen Flight 93 over another because it was nonstop from Newark to San Francisco.

“It was numbing,” Root, 64, recalled. Growing up, Root and Bay spent many holidays together as well as vacations at the New Jersey shore.

“She was kind of the big sister I never had,” said Root, who has no siblings. “I looked up to her as a teenager.”

Root was so moved by his first visit that he eventually served on a committee that selected the memorial design, was for years a member of the Families of Flight 93 organization and has made frequent trips here to monitor progress of the project’s $62-million first phase.

He plans to be here Saturday with hundreds of other relatives of Flight 93 victims. The opening ceremony marks the completion of the initial phase of the project — about half of what is planned.

The memorial features a cast concrete gateway leading to a 900-foot-long walkway that offers vistas of the flower-covered “Sacred Ground” that absorbed the impact of the crash.

At the end of the walkway is a black granite wall listing the names of crew members and passengers. A Field of Honor will eventually be framed with groves of maple trees and a walking path.

Future plans include a visitors center between two large concrete walls that designate Flight 93’s final path; a 93-foot-high “Tower of Voices” with 40 wind chimes near the park entrance; and 40 memorial groves, each with 40 trees.

California architect Paul Murdoch had in mind the courage of the passengers and crew when he designed the memorial.

The 9/11 Commission concluded that the hijackers downed the plane in Pennsylvania as the hostages, who had learned of the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., revolted.

“We used the large scale of the open site to give a heroic quality to the memorial, creating a long, arching walkway around a Field of Honor,” Murdoch said. “We used the serenity of the rural landscape to inform the memorial expression as a cemetery, while working with the severity of the site’s exposure and mining history to recognize it as a battleground.”

Even in its temporary state, the park has attracted visitors from all 50 states and places as far as Africa, Romania and the Netherlands.

Root said it’s not unusual to see visitors patting their pocket or reaching into their purses to leave behind something personal.

Firefighters, police officers and medics leave their company patches. Children leave toys. Bay’s husband, Erich, leaves an arrangement of flowers on each of his visits: four yellow roses for flight crew members and one red rose for his late wife. More than 35,000 tributes have been left behind and become part of a stored archival collection.

Root thinks visitors will find the new memorial a contemplative place where they’ll ask themselves, “What would I have done?”

“Many people believe that if the plane was in the air a few more seconds, it would have hit the town and every child in town was in school that day,” Root said. The flight crew and passengers “knew if they didn’t act that something far worse would happen.”

patrick.lester@mcall.com