Town embraces role it never sought
JULIE JACOBSON/The Associated Press
American flags are reflected in a marker inscribed with the words "Let's Roll..." at the temporary memorial for Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa., yesterday. Memorial services for the victims of United Airlines Flight 93, which went down last Sept. 11 after being hijacked, were planned for yesterday and today, the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks. "Let's Roll...." was said by passenger Todd Beamer shortly before the plane crashed. |
"Let's roll." -- The last words heard from passenger Todd Beamer aboard Flight 93.
"Get out of here." -- The last words recorded, probably from a hijacker in the cockpit to passengers, on the plane that went down near Pittsburgh.
SHANKSVILLE, Pa. -- I arrive uncertainly, juggling road maps, notebooks, bottles of water in a rented car and lots of unanswered questions on my mind.
It takes planning and effort to find this yawning and friendly town, whose own mayor describes it as being "between here and nowhere."
That's the signpost up ahead. Your next stop: Welcome to Shanksville. A Friendly Little Town. Est. 1803.
Nestled along a creek bed in the undulating foothills of the Allegheny mountains, Shanksville is a small homestead where red, white and blue ribbons adorn every street lamp lining Main Street, which is deserted on this early August afternoon in the 102-degree heat.
There is nobody over at Ida's, the sole convenience store in town, which has the only ATM for miles around. It is a sleepy town with a small fire department, a smaller post office, and 245 people in a forgotten place of sprawling farmland 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh in Somerset County.
It is the last place you'd expect to see terrorism drop from the sky.
Nevin Lambert put his feet up just above the big American flag emblazoned along the front of his white porch at his old 100-acre farm, opening a stack of mail and recalling the day he says changed his life forever.
"I try not to look back too much at one time to the spot where the plane crashed," says Nevin, a 55-year-old farmer who raises Black Angus cattle and witnessed the crash less than an eighth of a mile away from 820 Skyline Road -- the only road leading directly to the crash site.
"I keep seeing that fireball in my mind. I never seen anything like it in my whole lifetime, and I hope I don't again. I mean it. I never thought that on September 11th that something like that would ever happen here.
"This is small-town America. That's not supposed to happen here."
Thousands come from around the world to stand and look upon a field with a single American flag that approximates the spot where the crash occurred. They get there on a recently black-topped road that was nothing more than wheel tracks in the dirt prior to the crash. There's not much to see. But people don't come here to see it as much as to feel it.
"I feel like I'm on hallowed ground," says Ilene Mawn, from Johnsonburg, Pa. "Especially when you realize how much of a sacrifice these heroes made. You just don't hear enough about the good people in America. I'm going to be bowing my head many, many times on September 11th.
"I lost my husband to cancer two years ago. And when this happened here, I realized how blessed I was. They never had the opportunity to say good-bye to their loved ones. They gave their all. Every day now, I appreciate life even more."
Folks here say that, had the plane stayed in the air for one more minute, it would've crashed into the Stoney Creek School in Shanksville where 500 children, K through 12, were sitting that morning.
When Flight 93 came down, eyewitnesses agreed on a few facts: the Boeing 757 was headed southeast very fast. It was flying erratically and wobbling right and left, at a low altitude of roughly 2,500 feet. Its right wing dipped down suddenly and the jetliner plunged into the earth at nearly a 90-degree angle.
"I had just finished shoveling coal into the cellar (in preparation) for the winter, and was sittin' right on this front porch when I saw the plane coming down at a 45-degree angle," Nevin Lambert says. "I said to myself, 'Boy, that plane's in big trouble.' It was flippin' from one side to the other. I did not hear no engines on the plane. I didn't see no smoke. When it went nose down straight into the ground, I looked at my watch, and it was 10:07 a.m. Boy, I was scared."
What caused Flight 93's abrupt final dive as Nevin looked at his watch isn't known. It now seems likely that two groups of men -- the "Let's Roll," gung-ho American businessmen led by passengers Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick and Lou Nacke and the militant extremist hijackers bound together in a suicide plot -- became locked in a desperate struggle aboard Flight 93.
Cell phone calls from Beamer, Bingham, Burnett and Glick provide legitimate evidence of an onboard rebellion. FBI investigators said they've found nothing to contradict that scenario.
"The vibration and the sound (of the crash) shook the whole house," Nevin said. "The front door was blown open and the glass broke. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't see anything except for the fireball coming up over the trees and all that black smoke comin' my way. That really scared me. For a minute or two, it even blocked out the sun. Clumps of dirt came flying down on the house."
After it stopped raining dirt and smoke and fiery debris, he later found a couple of pieces of metal from the aircraft in his yard.
While the FBI and other authorities have said the plane was mostly obliterated by the 500 mph impact, they also said a 1,000-pound piece of one of the engines was found "a considerable distance" from the crater in the wide open spaces of the Svonavec Coal Co.
The strip mine is composed of very soft black soil, and searchers said much of the wreckage was found buried 20 to 25 feet below the large crater. Debris washed up more than two miles away at Indian Lake, and a canceled check and brokerage statement from the plane were found in a valley 8 miles away.
Immediately following the crash, rumors surfaced that Flight 93 had been shot down. The Pentagon categorically denies that military aircraft downed the jet.
Most Americans are quite secure in their belief that a struggle between the passengers and the hijackers caused the crash.
Especially everyone here in the middle of nowhere.
Folks differ as to where the crash site actually is. Some call it Shanksville because that's where the media were kept, a mile away from the actual explosion. Some say it's actually in Stoystown. Others maintain it should be called Stony Creek Township.
Wherever they chose to call it, it is nothing more than a sloping field that stretches to the horizon on four sides in which the only signs of life are two huge strip-mining cranes in the distance.
"We're used to it being quiet living out here in the country," says Nevin Lambert, who also works as a volunteer at the memorial site. "We used to get the mailman and one or two neighbors on this road. Now we get 300 to 400 a day and about 1,000 on weekends.
"I don't watch TV much anymore. I like to take out my binoculars and count all the different license plates. So far, I've seen every state except for Montana and Alaska -- but I might've missed them."
Folks roll slowly and uncertainly down Skyline Drive to stop at a parking area built a quarter-mile from the crash site, overlooking the area ringed with huge chain-link fence. They leave hats and flowers and poems and all manner of memorabilia at this memorial site where ordinary Americans performed the ultimate act of courage for their country.
"We don't take life nearly as lightly as we did before the crash, do we honey?" 52-year-old Dave Motchenbaugh, a saw mill worker from New Germany, Pa., asks his wife Doris. "After something like this, you just never really know what's going to happen tomorrow, do you?"
Conventional wisdom has it that Flight 93 was headed toward Washington and a strike on the White House or the Capitol. But the Times of London, quoting U.S. intelligence sources and noting the plane's low altitude and erratic course, suggested the target might have been one of the nuclear power plants in the state. The Three Mile Island plant, near Harrisburg, was roughly 12 minutes away.
Initially, sleepy Shanksville was a community caught unaccustomed to the flood of attention of the sudden onslaught of visitors. Yet, since becoming a pilgrimage to patriotism, its residents have adopted an unwavering loyalty to whom they always refer to as the heroes of Flight 93, and their families.
They now see themselves as volunteer caretakers to heroic American history and embrace it with a quiet grace.
"I've met just about everybody here," says Linda McClintock, a volunteer ambassador at the site. "People are saying that being here is a whole lot difficult. I feel very lucky that I got to do this. It gave me a sense that I am doing something for the people and for their peace. It is my contribution to a beautiful place."
Life has since gone back to normal here.
But it will never be the same.
If the sense is one of a new-found vulnerability in New York City, and one of renewed purpose in Washington, here at the memorial site for Flight 93, it is one of innocence lost.
And of new friends found.
Nevin ripped open a package sent to him by Harry Goad, from Middletown, Md., and pulled out an American eagle pin.
"I like doing this, buddy," Nevin said. "My life has changed 100 percent since 9/11. I met neighbors I never knew I had. I've met people from all different countries. I've made all new friends and 99 and 99/100 percent of them are really nice people. They respect older people around here.
"I even get mail from people who send me pictures and coins from around the world. The stuff I got -- probably runs into the thousands. I'm even going to visit the president because I'm a volunteer here.
"The United States of America on 9/11 really became united. We will never forget."
Nevin Lambert pinned the American eagle to his well-worn, short-sleeved shirt and went inside to get his binoculars.
Down the road, cars were still rolling in.
Dick White can be reached through the Internet at soitgoes@s-t.com
This story appeared on Page A1 of The Standard-Times on September 11, 2002.
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