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.