Luminarias honor those lost on Flight 93
STONYCREEK, Pa. – Just about 20 years have passed since Gordon Felt first saw the site where his brother and 39 other people were killed on Flight 93.
It was the ride there that stuck with him most.
The families of the passengers and crew were bused through the “back country roads” of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, Felt recalled, but the roads weren’t empty. They were lined with people; children waved American flags, their parents held signs and first responders stood at intersections to salute them – one of the first signs of the community’s warm embrace of the families and of the 40 who died, including his brother, Edward.
Felt told that story Friday at the Flight 93 Memorial, and in a few hours, the story would spring to life again. Hundreds of people would line the quartermile route at the memorial site, watching as 40 people – one-by-one – carried lanterns to honor the passengers and crew who banded together against hijackers to force down Flight 93 two decades ago, thwarting another terror attack on 9/11.
Walking down the route near the crash site, they placed the lights below the names of the 40 who were killed, written on large marble stone panels called the Wall of Names. It’s a yearly ceremony at the memorial, but one that carried extra weight ahead of Saturday’s anniversary.
“We need this. Our country and the world needs places like the Flight 93 National Memorial because it reminds us of who we are, who we became and perhaps who we could once again become – a healing,” Felt said.
As visitors streamed through the education center to hear the story of Flight 93 onto the observation deck to see the final resting place of the passengers and crew, it served as a symbol of Somerset County’s new identity, as a local called it. Henry Cook, who has been involved with the memorial for years, said the area once considered coal-mining its backbone. Now, it’s the 40 heroes, he said, embraced by a community that tried to carry some of the burden for their families.
Friday gave officials a chance to celebrate what the sprawling memorial has become, too. It was built with the help of the families who were trying to process immeasurable loss.
“This memorial really shines a light that America has heroes who step forward – that people unbeknownst even as they were entering a flight to travel to the other part of the United States end up as heroes that we still recognize today,” U.S. Rep. John Joyce said as he walked the memorial plaza before the luminaria ceremony.