By Beth Sergent

For Mason County Extra Edition

With summer officially upon us, I’m sure many of you are making plans to travel with your friends and family. Maybe you’re planning outings around notable dates on the calendar, including the Fourth of July?

In Mason County, when we think of the Fourth of July, we think of fireworks and parades from the Bend Area to Point Pleasant.

Of course, “the Fourth” is a holiday based upon the passage of the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

Sound familiar?

Last weekend, I was in Pittsburgh for night one of the Taylor Swift Eras Tour. I was with 70,000-plus others, pursuing life, liberty and happiness in the same place, at the same time. The concert was amazing, and, though I could probably do a column on that experience alone, it wasn’t my only stop in Pennsylvania.

When at all possible, I try to utilize our family entrance pass for the National Park Service (NPS), which we buy each year. This is an incentive to search out NPS locations to explore. So far this year, we’ve been to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hills, N.C., and last week, the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania’s Somerset County.

The Saturday after the Taylor Swift concert, we left the city early and headed about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh to the national memorial, which is free to all, regardless of purchasing a NPS entrance pass or not.

Upon entering the area, we were struck with how peaceful and familiar the scenery appeared for such an extraordinary event to have occurred.

Directly across from the memorial entrance is the Tower of Voices, which is a literal tower of 40 wind chimes paying tribute to the passengers and crew of Flight 93. We decided we would visit this landmark upon exiting and continued to the visitor’s center, where a handful of cars were already parked after the doors had just opened for the day.

We walked along a unique, black granite sidewalk leading to the center’s entrance only to be stopped by a darker, urgent strip of information, laid across the surface, like a polished, black armband on a mourner. The black band breaks your stride with information, like news rushing across the bottom of a television screen, in a silent, solemn delivery. This process of interruption is repeated two more times, and though subtle, it is impossible to ignore. The information crossing your path states:

8:46:30 AM 1WTC American Airlines Flight 11;

9:03:02 AM 2WTC United Airlines Flight 175;

9:37:46 AM Pentagon American Airlines Flight 77.

Eventually you realize you are walking along the flight path of United Airlines Flight 93, the one aircraft that never arrived at its intended target in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001. The actions of the 40 passengers and crew aboard the flight are credited with thwarting this part of the 9/11 attacks and indeed, they were the first Americans to strike back at the terrorists. These 40 brave souls lost their lives in that fight after the aircraft crashed into an open field, next to a wooded area, at 10:03:11 a.m. According to the NPS, the plane struck the ground at a 40-degree angle, almost upside down, crashing at a speed between 563-580 miles per hour, while carrying approximately 5,500 gallons of Jet A Fuel at impact. It’s estimated, had the plane maintained its course, it would have arrived in Washington, D.C. in 18-20 minutes.

As you walk forward on the flight path, there is a narrowing/opening in the texturized concrete of the structure that houses the visitor’s center. These tall, portal walls pull your line of sight forward and upwards to the sky. You are led through the narrows into an overlook that pushes out over a calm valley, which is now the final resting place of those heroes on Flight 93. This is the view from the Flight Path Overlook, which ends with a clear partition, inscribed with the words, “A common field one day. A field of honor forever.”

Walking into the visitor’s center, we were struck with the quietness; the respectfulness of the visitors. I could hear the voice of former President George W. Bush speaking after the terrorist attacks, praising the 40 passengers and crew on Flight 93 for their act of heroism.

The visitor’s center is full of interactive, educational exhibits which focus on the Flight 93 story, including the biographies of the passengers and crew, as well as the investigation into the crash. The permanent exhibit also provides context regarding the entirety of the terrorist attacks that fateful September day.

For those who were alive to remember, it is an eerie feeling to hear the rebroadcast of famous news anchors, now long gone, conveying what was unbelievable at the time, in a space that has vowed to never forget it.

After exploring the exhibits inside the visitor’s center, we drove past the memorial groves of trees, to the nearby Memorial Plaza and Crash Site. Of course, the actual crash site is closed to visitors, though you walk beside and near the hallowed space.

Just beyond your reach is a 17.5-ton sandstone boulder which denotes the edge of the impact site near a grove of Hemlock trees. Trees play an important role in the memorial as some were scarred by the impact and bore witness to what happened to Flight 93.

Upon looking out into the crash site’s surrounding field, it appears lush and green, though oddly shaped. Clearly, something interrupted the lay of the land, though it is now mostly hidden beneath a serene, respectful cover.

Further down the path, is a stunning but simple ceremonial gate to the crash site; a pathway to that final resting place. Made with hemlock beams, the gate is etched with 40 unique angles for the 33 passengers and seven crew members aboard Flight 93. According to the NPS, the gate is only opened on September 11 for family members to visit the actual crash site.

The gate sits near the “Wall of Names” made of polished, white marble etched with the identities of the passengers and crew. The wall continues along the flight path and final approach of Flight 93. From a distance, the wall looks smooth and unified, as if in a straight line, but up close, you realize, each panel pulls slightly, separately, outward, containing a single name to focus upon an individual life.

When leaving the park, which was by then filling with vehicles including tour buses, we stopped at the Tower of Voices, which stands 93 feet tall, housing those 40 wind chimes meant to represent the voices of the 40 passengers and crew on Flight 93. According to park literature, it’s intended to serve as a visual and audible reminder of their heroism.

While standing at the Tower of Voices, one of the park attendants asked me if I’d been to the Taylor Swift concert the night before in Pittsburgh (I was wearing a concert hoodie). Turns out, the attendant was a Swiftie too, and we chatted about that for a bit. Maybe it seems odd to talk about Taylor Swift amid that space of reflection, but by connecting with something familiar and easy, we all exhale. It was an ordinary conversation which we were allowed to have thanks to the extraordinary thing that happened just over the hill from us. How many ordinary conversations did you have today? How would the world have changed had those 40 people not affected our lives? And make no mistake, what they did affected you.

When we left, we stopped at the national memorial’s entrance sign, as we often do to take a picture for our NPS scrapbook. As we stepped closer to the sign, we realized there were coins, including actual money, as well as challenge coins, left on the concrete ledge, as if it were a cemetery, as a sign of respect for the 40; offerings of remembrance.  

I asked myself, what would I do in the situation those 40 people, most of them presumably strangers on the same flight, found themselves in on Sept. 11, 2001? These were ordinary people, visiting loved ones, going to work, living their lives, expecting to go home that day. I’m sure many visitors ask themselves a different version of that same question while visiting the site. It feels like an inevitable destination in your consciousness.  

Before leaving, I said a silent prayer for those 33 passengers and seven crew members aboard Flight 93 and thanked them. What more can you do now? Remembering is a start.

What pieces of life, liberty and happiness were yours today?

For more information on the Flight 93 memorial, check out these links: https://www.nps.gov/flni/index.htm; https://www.flight93friends.org/.

© 2023, Mason County Extra Edition, all rights reserved.

Beth Sergent has nearly 20 years of experience in journalism, having worked as both a reporter and editor. She has a BLA in English from Marshall University, and a certificate in Technical Writing from Duke University. She is a lifelong resident of Point Pleasant, in Mason County.

(Editor’s Note on accessibility: Mason County Extra Edition attempts to use accessible fonts and alternative text for photographs, to be inclusive of all readers.)