Shanksville, PA: To the Places Where Things Changed Forever

The town of Somerset sits quietly among the rolling hills of southwest Pennsylvania. At the intersection of North Pleasant Avenue and Stoystown Road the twin silos of the Somerset Milling Company stand white and proud, watching over Coxes Creek and the tracks of the CSX. These freight lines run up to Johnstown and down to Rockwood; to Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Baltimore; north to Montreal and south to Miami; through Indianapolis, Indiana and Dickson, Tennessee; clear across to Memphis and all the way down to New Orleans.

Stoystown Road runs northeast from the center of town, under the Pennsylvania Toll Pike and past the Somerset County Airport. Through the sleepy town of Friedens and toward Indian Lake the simplicity of yesteryear plays hide and seek with the occasional passerby. A white trailer stands in the tall grass, Funnel Cakes painted across the side in red carnival script. Behind sits a big old country house, the kind with the wrap-around front porch. A small hand-made sign pokes out of the weeds around a bend, advertising someone’s Maple Syrup. Rivers amble free of concrete diversion. Signs of traditional pursuits and simple times persist, all the way to Shanksville and the crash site of United Flight 93.

At first there were no fences and no signs, no informational pamphlets and no parking lot. “People in the community just began to volunteer, showing visitors and strangers where the site was,” explained one of the two National Park Service rangers on duty. We listened to him as we stood in the sun, in the gravel lot outside the makeshift visitor center, a stone’s throw from the crest of a hill overlooking a wide-open field. “They set up a fence, kept track of visitors. Basically became a kind of task force.”

That fence they set up was forty feet in length, one foot for each of the victims of the downed flight. Decorated with messages, flowers and flags, this fence served as the Flight 93 Memorial for a time.

Three months after our visit the first phase of the memorial was complete and open to the public. Since then the place has evolved in design to include a curving walkway along the northern edge of the field, a 40-foot Wall of Names, and a boulder marking the point where the plane hit ground. But for all the planning and long-term construction, the Flight 93 National Memorial consists largely of a vast swath of empty grassland sitting amid the widely scattered farms, forests and homes.

On our way back to the highway we passed again the country house with the wrap-around porch and the funnel cake trailer. Another maple syrup sign beckoned meekly to the traffic heading south as we now were. A detour brought us past an old billboard advertising Keystone Beer before leading up to a ridge that put us above the lush hills, the quiet farms, the thick forests, and the remaining gentility of a place that once sat in obscure innocence.

Elkhart, Indiana: Remembering Them By Name

Jon tossed his bag onto the bed near the window of our room at the South Bend Motel 6. He always picked the bed next to the window. I never asked why.

He reached into the side pocket of his bag and pulled out a small rectangle of gold metal. “Check it out,” he said, handing it to me. “Some random guy gave me this business card at a trade show somewhere.”

I read the name on the card. By now it was very familiar.

Jon took it back and stuck it in his wallet. “I didn’t think I’d ever need it but for some reason I held onto it.”

“Lucky you did,” I said.

Three years after that trade show Jon dug that very unusual card out of the top drawer of his studio desk and called the number etched in the corner. I wish I could have listened to the conversation that must have ensued.

In addition to the cross, Jon’s memorial would include a Book of Names; stainless steel pages etched with the names, in alphabetical order, of the 2,997 people lost on September 11th. This book would be bound with steel rings and placed in a small alcove built into the base on which the cross would stand. Jon knew he could make a fourteen-foot cross. For the fine, small-scale artistry required to etch those names in steel he’d have to find someone else.

Enter Dan Brekke, the guy with the metal business cards.

Dan greeted us outside his company, Indy Metal Etching, with a soft smile and a firm handshake. He was a pretty big guy, having played football for four years at Purdue. His wife Deanna, on the other hand, was as petite as a cheerleader. Her smile, though, was just as big as Dan’s.

After a few quick words they led us through the large bay door that was open to the driveway where we were parked. Inside was a sprawling room with long tables set up to display pictures showing, and explanations detailing, the work that went into the creation of the Book of Names. Front and center was the Book itself, some of the pages already bound together with the steel rings. Other pages lie off to the side, more names yet to be added before the installation in New York.

As Mr. Brekke showed Jon around the room his employees stood quietly by. “We’re so honored to be a part of this,” many of them said, already having lent an appreciable amount of time and skill to this contribution of theirs. In their eyes, in their faces and in the product of their labor was a visible sense of pride; their reward for saying yes to an idea that was not even fully formed when Jon dug that card out of his drawer.

Mike Compton, Chief of the Elkhart City Fire Department, would tell us later that in the immediate wake of 9-11 he knew he couldn’t just stand by and watch while so much was going on and so much help was needed. So he jumped in his truck and drove to New York City with fellow firefighter Matt Rody in the seat beside him. “To go help out, go do something," he said. He sounded like he still wished he could have done more.

“We worked from the 12^th to the 14^th, just doing whatever we could do,” Chief Compton explained. “Then went back the next week for three more days.”

In reliving some of the stress of those days he told us how, climbing through the wreckage, he found a hole in the rubble that reached four floors down. “By that time, with all the stuff in the air, we knew there was no way we were going to find anyone alive down there.”

In his eyes the regret still lingered.

Indianapolis: The Life of the Journey

Hawthorne Community Center

The Shell gas station in Dickson, Tennessee, right in front of our Motel 6, probably wouldn't stand out in anyone's memories of a drive across the country. Neither would the adjacent Sudden Service quick-mart (with the possible exception of the walk-in cooler. Welcome to the Beer Cave read the decal letters on the door. It was nice.) Few if any of the dozens of gas stations and convenience stores we'd seen would remain in memory except for that one reliable constant: the people.

Roberta, one of the Sudden Service clerks, kept the line of customers inside waiting as she lingered outside next to the truck. “I’m serious, you guys...This is amazing…” Her Boston accent trembled with emotion. “How absolutely, incredibly beautiful...” She dropped a note in and stood for a moment, one hand over her trembling lips, before climbing back down off the truck. “This is certainly an honor, being a part of this...”

We’d met tons of people. We’d seen so much emotion. But few in my mind matched the intensity, the unfettered purity of Roberta’s response to all the things she saw in that cross.

Standing on the oily cement she continued to stare, her deep eyes a mix of the strongest of human emotions until they began to tear up. “You guys...take care of yourselves...” She wiped her eyes and hurried back to her line of customers.

Roberta's co-worker Linda showed a much different kind of reaction. As a work of art the cross piqued her interest. As a memorial going to Ground Zero it flipped a visceral switch. “I gotta go, you guys are making the hairs on my arms stand up,” she said. Then Jon showed her the brick, explaining what it was, and she turned into a cornered animal. “No thank you,” she said, backing away. She wouldn’t even touch it, forget about hold it in her hands. “No way I’m laying a finger on that thing,” she said before thanking us and turning to make a beeline for the Sudden Service doors.

Kellie was from Bivins, Texas, and was working at a coal power plant in Mt. Storm, West Virginia on September 11^th. Unlike so many people all across the country that day, he had no time to stare at the television to watch events unfold. His facility in Mt. Storm supplied power to Washington, DC. And on that day, he said, DC was eating up energy.

“It really hits something deep in your heart,” his wife Annie added, talking about 9-11 probably, or Jon’s cross maybe, or perhaps both or a whole lot more.

As Jon was replacing the gas cap Kellie pulled out his wallet. “You fellas need a little help along your way?” Jon politely refused, as he had many times before, with varying results.

In a placid Indianapolis neighborhood was the Hawthorne Community Center and a calm swarm of people, from a handful of seniors all the way down to a mass of kindergarteners who could have come straight out of a casting call for a United Colors of Benetton advertisement. After the heat of New Orleans and Memphis the Indiana sun was a gentle blessing, floating down on us as the good folks of this mellow and welcoming neighborhood gathered in a casual cluster, all ears to the story of the cross. They milled around, angling for pictures and sharing pens to write their notes, waiting politely to ask questions and offering their thoughts and thanks.

“You boys don’t realize how important this is to people,” one elderly man said. He was bald, portly and utterly confident in his words. “What this means to us, and to everyone else who sees this, is something that words cannot express. Remember that, okay?”

From the way he spoke, and from the look in his eyes, it was easy to believe he’d been on a similar journey himself.

Jon continued talking to people and helping kids get up onto his truck and down again. Jason and his crew kept filming and snatching quick interviews. I looked around, at all the children. At their wide-eyed innocence. Aside from the physical, visible damage of 9-11 their perceptions of that faraway day were naturally and blessedly vague. The abstract weight that their parents felt was beyond the grasp of their little minds. And while I wished for them it could always be that way, I knew that if the world that they would soon inherit was to be any better than the one we were living in now they would need to know how hard, and how close to home, things could hit.

Memphis: Neighbors, Those Around Us



Willie Mitchell Blvd., South Memphis

Driving up Lauderdale Street on the south side of Memphis doesn’t strike any particular sensibilities. A wide north-south thoroughfare flanked by side streets of shade trees. Neat square front lawns and mostly one-story homes. We could have been in almost any suburb in the country.

Crossing Longview Drive brings you to Calvary Longview United Methodist Church and, a few hundred yards further, Longview Community Holiness Church. Then north of Person Avenue the road narrows. The sidewalks fill with weeds. Neat lawns and homes are replaced here and there by empty lots overtaken with crabgrass. The pavement along the cantered side streets lies cracked and patched-over. On one corner an abandoned house leans toward its inevitable defeat by the hands of time and the elements. On another stands a general store that may or may not have gone out of business. Parking lots and chain link fences and faded, cracking storefront signs begin to take over the landscape.

Yet there are also homes that show a resilient pride of the people who live here. People who are just a few minutes’ walk away from the saving graces of Mt. Sinai Baptist, Morning View Baptist, Greater Mt. Nebo Baptist, Carnegie Church of God-Christ, Mission Global Ministries, Christ Communion Church of God, Christ Missionary Baptist, Pearly Gates Baptist, Our Little Angels Thrift Store, the Southside Church of Christ and, on the far end of South Side Park, Mont Evers Cathedral Missionary Baptist.

Without warning Lauderdale Street became Willie Mitchell Boulevard. As we passed the Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church we saw that we were getting close to the address on the piece of paper resting on the dashboard.

A left turn on Olive Avenue (also known as Reverend Dr. Van Ford Jr. Road) brought us to Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church, Peter Rock Spiritual Church and the Temple of Praise Church. Up ahead, within a hundred yards of the intersection with Trigg Avenue, stood St. Thomas Catholic Church, New Kingdom Missionary Baptist Church, New Asia Baptist Church, and Church of God House of Prayer. Our stop was smack in the middle of it all.

We pulled over in front of a simple brick building. The word ROYAL was spelled out in cement high up on the two-story façade. The door underneath wore a colorful mural of (we figured) Willie Mitchell. From the gravel parking lot off of adjacent Richmond Avenue, in front of a wall painted forest green and fronted with tufts of grass and weeds, Lawrence ‘Boo’ Mitchell, Willie’s grandson, smiled and waved at us.

“Welcome to Memphis, gentlemen,” he said, giving us a round of enthusiastic handshakes. And there in a nondescript neighborhood in South Memphis we visited a small piece of American history - and befriended some of the everyday people who live there among the shaded streets, in the shadow of that history.

New Orleans to Memphis: Along the Roads We Travel

Our hopes were high as we headed north out of New Orleans, crossing the waters of lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain. Today’s road would lead to Memphis, 400 miles up the Mississippi River, a short enough trip to allow for a sojourn along Route 51 instead of spending the day on the Interstate. Images of small unvisited towns - humble environments and electric communities - filled our imaginations.

Route 51, we would soon learn, is lined with lots of forest and farm and not much else. It’s a beautiful drive, from Vicksburg to Clarksdale (the flooding around Redwood and Long Lake notwithstanding). Sadly the bits of life we saw resembled more of life that once was – closed businesses, gutted-out school buildings, collapsed barns and homes wearing nothing but the signs of destitution. Lending contrast were well-tended farm houses floating in wide, neat fields and the occasional shined-up Subway shop.

Across Panola and into Lafayette County we pulled off into Oxford, a quaint college town with attractive houses resting on lush, trimmed lawns. The central square holds plenty of charm, though just like the road we’d traveled to that point the sidewalks and balcony cafes were scarcely populated on this Memorial Day. The general consensus was that we wished we had more time to get to know the funky, lively Mississippi we all knew was out there somewhere.

In Cordova, Tennessee, just east of Memphis, the world’s tallest Three Crosses of Calvary look down over Bellevue Baptist Church, Interstate 40 and Memphis and the Mississippi River and the western horizon beyond. As the sun goes down the atmosphere is infinitely more serene than at BBQ rib joint you might find yourself patronizing thirty minutes later. Nakesha our waitress was a true professional, utterly confident that we wanted Memphis-style dry ribs not the dripping-with-spicy-sauce kind so popular with ‘people who don’t know what real ribs are’. By the way, Nakesha, can we get three more beers? ‘Oh I already ordered them for y’all, they’re on the way, hold on…’

Stuffed to the tonsils with fatty meat and cornbread we waddled out to the parking lot, inviting the staff of Corky’s to step outside with us. ‘What a wonderful thing,’ said waitress Evelyn Perkins, visibly moved as she spoke. ‘People forget so easily how many people lost their lives, how detrimental (9-11) was to the country.’ Ashunta McCray shared the message she wrote and placed inside: ‘America, look to the highest power. Love each other, save the world.’ Andrew ‘Lattie’ Latimer, a DJ who just happened by, couldn’t get enough of the project. ‘The whole world’s gonna end up seeing this thing,’ he said, adding the Grateful dead quote going through his head. You get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.

Late that night outside the Motel 6 we met Daren Howell, known as Church Boy within the motorcycle club he’d just joined, and his friend Pierre, also a motorcycle rider. ‘It’s good if you’ve got no family around,’ Daren said of being a part of such a club. ‘Whatever happens you have someone who will help you out.’ He and Pierre both wore a 'P' on their backs, a sign that they were probationary motorcycle club members. ‘9-11 is history we’ll all remember,’ Daren wrote on a piece of paper to put inside the cross. ‘All people lost, loved and lived, may Jesus be with them.’ Before they took off Daren asked us to stand with them as he said a prayer for the safety of all of us as we continued on down our respective roads.

New Orleans: The Strength of a Community

Many of the homes surrounding Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church in the St. Roch district of New Orleans were damaged when Katrina blew through in 2005. Some of them, and countless more all over the city, sit abandoned to this day, their windows boarded up, dates spray-painted on the front door or the porch wall marking the last time anyone set foot inside. The school next to the church still has not reopened.

All of this stood in stark contrast to the people drifting in from all directions.

As we pulled up we were greeted by a man named Emmanuel, dressed sharp right up to his Kangol cap. Moments later Choir Director Richard Cheri emerged from the golden double doors of the church; his wife Cynthia, a choir member, would appear beside him out of nowhere. They all thanked us, graciously and enthusiastically, for coming to their parish. Only a few minutes in we already knew the pleasure would be all ours.

The plan was to carry the cross into the church and stand it up. This quickly went to pot when we discovered the hard way that it wouldn’t fit through those gold front doors. Our only other choice then would be to stand it up at the foot of the steps outside, but with the breezes threatening, leaving a 500-pound, 14-foot piece of steel teetering by itself out on the sidewalk for the hour and a half service (‘He gets us out of there in about an hour if the Saints are playing,’ young Roy LaFargue told us) was quickly voted down. ‘Just leave it on its back,’ Jon said, already sweating in the bright humid morning.

Mass began, not surprisingly, with the choir belting out a brilliant opening hymn. The altar was backed with a mural that stretched all the way to the arched ceiling. Stained glass windows, massive and sparkling; hardly a church in Europe could compete. The reading of the gospel was injected with more singing; the sharing of peace and handshakes lasted ten minutes. It was amazing to think this church, this neighborhood, these people’s lives had been so recently ravaged.

After Mass Richard spoke of his community, admitting that yeah he was surrounded by an incredibly strong group of people. But they hadn’t done anything so special. ‘Thanks to God, we’re still here.’ Richard’s smile and his spirit were infective. Outside, watching the congregation milling around praising the cross and slurping on cherry ice, a woman spoke to Rev. Fernand Cheri (yes, Richard’s brother). ‘I felt the spirit of the Lord in there,’ she gushed. ‘He rose up from your toes and right into my heart!’ Gerard Hairston, from DC and a university student there in New Orleans, understood the strength of the community, after Katrina and in all things. ‘You can go through any problem, any obstacle,’ he said. ‘And come out victorious in the other side.’

Spending a little time at Our Lady Star of the Sea, you can’t help but believe this is true.

Bunkie, LA: Music & Mexican Food

Fifteen minutes south of the Bayou Boeuf River we rolled into Bunkie, a Main Street mix of local joints, small businesses and national franchises. And, today, live music.

“Check it out,” Jon said, pointing at a parking lot on the right side of the road where a four-man band in cowboy hats was twinging their twang up on a flatbed trailer.

“Time to pull over,” I said as Jon was pulling over.

A modest mingling of people stood in the hot sun watching the band while others sat in the shade of a white canopy tent. “We’re celebrating the Grand Opening of Karen’s Kitchen,” they explained, pointing over to a small blue barn-like hut that could have housed an ice-cream parlor in a former life. “You guys hungry? Go get yourselves some lunch. Good home cooking for you!”

Excellent. Right there in the middle of Louisiana, in some small town along a two-lane road. Could there be a more perfect place to grab some real Cajun cooking? Some genuine Creole cuisine? Some mudbug jambalaya, or a heaping helping of down-home, authentic…Mexican food?

That’s how it goes when you decide to just see how it goes. (Karen, by the way, could make a mean enchilada.)

By the time Bert, Ronnie, Jason and Chad had finished their song the crowd, consisting mainly of Karen’s extensive family tree branches, was listening to Jon and passing around the brick. “We’re police officers,” said Chad, motioning toward Jon’s truck. “So this really means something special to us.” After having Jon climb up onto their flatbed stage to say a few words into the mike, Chad thanked him for bringing his project to their small town and asked everyone else to make sure they did the same. The band then fell into a seemingly spontaneous rendition of John Cougar Mellencamp’s Pink Houses.

With a population of four thousand Bunkie was by far the largest town we saw along the hundred-mile route between Alexandria and Baton Rouge. For two hours we rolled past the farms and fields and the homes that dot the flat landscape, no evidence of the wood-porch towns we were hoping for. When Route 71 ran into Route 190 we cut left and ran through the northern reaches of the Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge, habitat for Louisiana black bear, American alligators, bald eagles, white-tailed deer and the eastern wild turkey.

We saw none of them as we rolled along through the northern tip of the thousands of acres of rich bottomland hardwood swamp they call home. Just south of us, running parallel to 190, were the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad. Interstate 10 brushed the southern boundary of the refuge. Somewhere in between, in the middle of all that green land, bordered on the west by the Atchafalaya River, all those bears and gators and turkeys were running wild. I would have given almost anything to see them.

Coalgate, OK: Why We're Doing This

Coalgate, OK Police & Fire Dept.

The cartoonish Coalgate Fire & EMS logo painted on the glass front door looked like an invitation if I ever saw one. We knocked anyway. Twice.

No answer. Twice.

We stepped inside. It was cool, dark and quiet. Sooty yellow turnout gear for a dozen men, maybe more, hung in a row along one wall. Helmets rested neatly on the shelves above. Below, big rubber boots stood in pairs. On the frames of the red metal racks were names written in black marker.

A hand-drawn memorial banner, dedicated to the New York Fire Department, hung on the wall at the top of the stairs.

Out of the silence came the sound of footsteps, followed by a lanky man in a white t-shirt, blue jeans, and the thickest moustache this side of Wyatt Earp. He smiled as he walked up to us. “Can I help you gentlemen?” Roger Wilson was off duty but still welcomed our odd intrusion with the kind of warmth you just can’t fake.

“How ya doin’?” Jon said. “Sorry to bother you like this, but uh…we want to show you something.”

Understandably, Roger looked a bit confused. He stroked his moustache and asked what it was we had to show him. Ten seconds of explanation and that confusion turned to intrigue. Mr. Wilson followed us outside.

“Man, we gotta show this to the rest of the guys! They’re just down the road! Come on, let’s go!” Three minutes later, in the parking lot behind the Family Health Center of Southern Oklahoma, we met with as good a bunch of guys as you could possibly imagine.

They spoke earnestly with Jon. They spoke quietly with each other. They held pieces of paper against the sides of their trucks or on their bent knees, writing notes and messages.

‘After 9-11, you know, all across the country and all across the world, we were brothers.’ On paper such a statement can come across as contrived, but when a guy like Berney Blue speaks you know it’s coming from the heart. ‘It means so much to us that you guys are here,’ said Assistant Chief Aaron Blue, Berney’s brother. 

On the edge of town Jon pulled over. “I gotta do something,” he said. The urgency in his voice made me think he had to take a whiz. The spark in his eye said he had something else to let out.

Jon dug into the pile of stuff in the back seat of the cab, pulled out a long blue sack and walked to the back of the truck. In that sack was an American flag tethered to a four-foot long flagpole that fit perfectly in one of the holes along the top edge of the side of the truck bed.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to do that,” Jon said to me as we pulled back out onto the road.

“Put the flag up?”

“Yeah. I’d been thinking about it but until now it just didn’t feel right. I felt like it would look like, I don’t know, some kind of political statement. And I didn’t want this trip to turn into some big Rah-Rah USA thing.”

“So why now?”

“Because I think that this is bigger than 9-11.” Jon paused, staring out at Route 75. “I mean, not that what we’re doing is bigger. Or more important or whatever because it’s not. But at the same time, you know, this is for all the people who died, obviously, but I feel like it really is for all the first responders who went down there, to Ground Zero, and then never came back. It’s for people like that who make this country great. And these guys we just met, they’re risking their lives to help other people. Maybe they’re not running into a hundred-story building that just got hit by a plane but still, all these guys are putting themselves on the line. That’s the attitude, you know, the spirit that made this country what it is. It ain’t about politics. It’s about people. And I kind of knew that when we started, I guess. But meeting all these people, and then talking to those guys back there… It all just came together.”

Jon’s words hung in the air. There was nothing else to say.

We rolled on, Jon’s flag whipping around in the breeze.