There will be a private service today to bury the unidentified remains from United flight 93, writes Jeff SWENSENin Shanksville, Pennsylvania
JERRY BINGHAM, whose son was a passenger on United Airlines flight 93 when it crashed into a Pennsylvania field a decade ago, has participated in so many memorial services for his son Mark (31) that he can barely remember them all.
Now, he is preparing for one more – but not yesterday’s 10th anniversary public tributes this weekend that included President Barack Obama and former presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, with thousands of onlookers.
Today, when the crowds are gone, the families of the 40 passengers and crew members who were killed when the aircraft was hijacked by terrorists on September 11th, 2001, will hold a private service to bury the unidentified remains of all of those who were on board.
Those remains have been kept in an above-ground crypt for the last 10 years by the Somerset county coroner, Wallace Miller, awaiting a final resting place. They will be laid to rest in three steel coffins at the patch of earth – sodden now from endless rains – where the aircraft rammed into the ground.
“This will be our last funeral,” Bingham says.
Not much, of course, was left after the crash except debris from United 93 and some personal belongings. Miller says only 8 per cent of the human remains were ever recovered because the aircraft, roaring down at more than 570 miles an hour, exploded when it crashed. “Everything vaporised on impact,” he says.
At least some remains were recovered and matched for all 40 on board (in fact, for all 44, including the four terrorists), but the amounts were tiny – much less, even in total, than those that were unidentified.
The matching of remains for everyone killed here distinguishes this site from the scenes of the two other September 11th terrorist attacks, where not all of the remains have been identified.
With today’s service, the Pennsylvania crash site, which is off limits to the public, will officially become a cemetery. This communal grave occupies one small corner of a 2,200-acre park nestled in the rolling hills of the Laurel Highlands that is now part of the National Park Service. The crash site, renamed the “field of honour,” lies at the edge of an open field near a stand of maples and hemlocks.
Patrick White, vice president of Families of Flight 93, who lost his cousin Louis Nacke in the crash, views today’s burial as a reunion, of sorts, of “what until now has been a disconnection, a physical separation between the ‘them’ in the three caskets and the ‘those’ who are in the ground”.
“I view it as the first – and last – reuniting of people who have a shared destiny and a now common history,” White says.
Their destinies merged on the morning of September 11th, as they left Newark intending to fly to San Francisco. The aircraft was hijacked at 9.28am and air traffic controllers in Cleveland picked up a Mayday call from the pilot.
The passengers and crew were forced to the back of the aircraft, where they used the Airfones on the seatbacks to report the attack. At that point, they learned that a broader terrorist attack against the United States was under way.
The terrorists had turned the aircraft toward Washington, and later evidence revealed that their target was probably the United States Capitol. The passengers and crew quickly devised a plan to storm the cockpit; the cockpit voice recorder picked up the screaming and mayhem of the insurrection.
The terrorists tried to disrupt the rebellion by rolling the plane from left to right and pitching its nose up and down. The 9/11 Commission said the terrorists maintained control of the aircraft and decided to crash rather than risk having the crew and passengers take over. At 10.03am, it crashed here, in the midst of fields that are now covered with goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace. The white blades of windmills churn nearby.
“It’s such a beautiful setting for such a horrible, violent thing,” says Gordon Felt, president of the Families of Flight 93, whose brother, Edward, was a passenger that day. “This land is healing, but it is not healed. It will never be totally healed.”
The planning of any kind of memorial was stalled for years by a lengthy land-acquisition process, including a dispute with the owner of the 270-acre property where the aircraft actually crashed.
A public-private partnership has a multipart $62 million memorial here, but it is only partly built. Its marble “wall of names” was dedicated on Saturday, along with a visitors’ shelter. Once they raise a final $10 million, they intend to build an entry portal and a permanent visitors’ centre. There are plans later for a 93ft tower with 40 chimes for each of the dead. The visitors’ centre for now is a small, rusted, corrugated shed left over from a mining operation here.
It was the approach of the 10th anniversary that helped to focus the families on deciding to bury the unidentified remains at the crash site.
The service today will be a full- fledged funeral, Wally Miller, the coroner says, with at least one military pallbearer.
“There were four American military veterans on the plane, but in my mind there were 36 other veterans on that plane as well,” Miller adds. “These people knew that they were pretty well doomed and for them to pull it together under unbelievable pressure to win the first battle of the war – incredible.”
The adult-size coffins are 6ft 6in long. They will be lowered into three concrete vaults and covered with earth. “When I walk away from there, the case will be closed on my end,” Miller says.
White says a huge boulder that was dug up nearby would become the collective headstone. It will have a small plaque on the back, so only family members – at least for now – can see it.
As for Bingham, he says he derives comfort from the site, where he feels the presence of his son. "You get a feeling of belonging," he says. "There's a serenity factor. You feel like you are talking to him. That's the place for the burial." – (Copyright New York Timesservice)