Flight 93 National Memorial
Over two years ago, I was introduced to the National Parks Passport Book while visiting a National Park in Florida. Since then, I have been on the quest to get “Passport” stamps in my book. For those unaware, there are different sizes of books, but the goal for all of them is to collect as many stamps as you can from the 63 National Parks, and various National Monuments, historic sites, trails, seashores, etc., that fall under the umbrella of our National Park System. There is a total of 429 ‘units’ (parks) located in all 50 states, U.S. Territories and the District of Columbia. Our travels were going very close to the Flight 93 National Memorial so we planned a stop near there so we could visit the Memorial and I could get my passport stamp for my book. We also managed to squeeze in a trip to the Johnstown Flood National Memorial.
The state campground we stayed at was beautiful and I would be happy to go back and spend more time there. We also had dinner at Jean Bonnet Tavern, a nearby historic tavern with delicious food and drinks (and they say it’s haunted)!
We visited the Flight 93 Memorial on a Tuesday and it took us about 3 hours to do the site, but that included the time to look through the store, read through the panels of information in the Visitor Center and the approx. 2 miles of trail walking we did from the Visitor Center to the Memorial Plaza by the actual site of the crash.
It goes without saying that tears were involved on my part and I think Chuck was very uncomfortable. It reminded us of conversations we had that day. The site is respectfully done and they do a good job of highlighting the key moments of that morning leading to the crash of Flight 93. Part of the display includes the recordings of telephone calls made by the passengers to their family, friends and flight operator – I chose to skip that section. It wasn’t until the end where various pictures of the passengers from their lives that the sadness really hit me. It’s a blatant reminder that anything can happen to any one of us, on any given day, that can end it all.
As a military family, we know and have taken on the inherent risks associated with that job, with its possibility of injury and even death, but the military is volunteer and those risks are accepted. These were people going about their lives on a planned trip for fun or for work, who were placed in a position of risk and decision making which resulted in their untimely death – and it could happen to anyone of us – at any given time.
There, but for the Grace of God, go I.