Pennsylvania - Flight 93 National Memorial

This site was tough. I knew it would be, but I wanted to visit. After turning into the site, you first come across the “Tower of Voices”. This tower includes 40 windchimes representing the 40 innocent lives (passengers and crew) of Flight 93.

The visitor center is at least a mile past the Tower of Voices. During the drive, I couldn’t help but think that this was the flight path of the flight, and what was going on in the plane in the seconds before the crash. It was very poignant.

In the Visitor Center, there is a museum that very powerfully shows the timeline of events of 9/11, and how the various events on Flight 93 progressed. There was also a large map showing the flight path that the flight took, and the location of other planes in the area. All of it served to put the events from the flight into a very clear focus.

Also in the museum were many photos of the people on the plane, as well as transcripts of their last calls to their loved ones. They basically had about a half hour between the time the plane was hijacked, and the crash. In that time, many passengers used the phones in the seats to call loved ones. In these phone calls, they learned about the two planes that hit the World Trade Center. After learning of these events, the passengers took a vote and decided to try to stop the hijackers from carrying out their plan.

The crash took place only 20 minutes of flight time from the US Capitol, and the people who died on this flight are heroes.