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Johnstown & FLT 93 MemorialJun 24, 2009
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Johnstown City Hall
Highwater Marks-Top 1889 Midldle-1936 Bottom-1977
Flt 93 Memorial Site
| Johnstown is the nearst large town with a Michael's Craft store and Patricia was in need of supplies. We made the 25 mile trip and toured the town which is preparing for "Thunder in the Valley", a four day motorcycle gathering starting Thusday. On May 31, 1889, a neglected dam and a phenomenal storm led to a catastrophe in which 2,209 people died. It's a story of great tragedy, but also of triumphant recovery. The great Johnstown flood of 1889 is remembered as the worst disaster by dam failure in American history. In fact, it was the greatest single-day civilian loss of life in this country before September 11, 2001. The 1889 flood was the biggest news story of its era, and the biggest scandal, as many of the leading industrialists of the day were members of the club that owned the dam. The relief effort was the first major peacetime disaster for Clara Barton and the fledgling American Red Cross. These are just some of the reasons the 1889 Johnstown flood is so important in American history. Additional floods in 1936 & 1977 also devastated the town, but none as deadly as 1889. On the return to Somerset we went to the Flt 93 Memorial. As you may recall on the morning of September 11, 2001, four commercial airliners were hijacked in a planned attack against the United States. Two of the flights were deliberately flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, resulting in the loss of 2,749 innocent lives, including plane crews and passengers, building occupants, and rescue workers. A third plane was flown into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, taking the lives of 125 in that building, and the 59 innocent passengers and crew on board the plane. A fourth plane, Flight 93, a Boeing 757 traveling from Newark (NJ) to San Francisco (CA), experienced a delay at take-off. When it left the ground at 8:42 a.m. the flight was running more than 25 minutes late. After forty-six minutes of routine flight, as the plane passed over eastern Ohio, hijackers seated in the first class section of the plane attacked at 9:28 a.m. The terrorists entered the cockpit and gained control of the plane by incapacitating the captain and first officer. Flight 93 turned southeast, heading for the nation’s capital. Shortly before 10 a.m. the plane was observed flying low and erratically over southwestern Pennsylvania. At 10:03 a.m. the plane crashed at 580 miles per hour into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Emergency responders arriving at the scene minutes after the crash found no survivors. All thirty-three passengers, seven crew members, and four hijackers were killed. In the hours and days that followed, an astounding story about what happened on board Flight 93 was revealed. When the terrorist-hijackers took over the plane, passengers and crew began telephoning family members, friends, and the authorities to report the hijacking, providing those on the ground with firsthand accounts. The calls enabled the passengers and crew to gain critical information, including the news that two aircraft had intentionally crashed into the World Trade Center. As their phone conversations reveal, the passengers and crew of Flight 93 realized that their plane, too, was part of the planned attack. This realization led to a collective decision by the crew and passengers to revolt against the hijackers. According to one phone call, they took a vote among themselves and decided to rush the terrorists in an attempt to retake the plane. The cockpit voice recorder, later recovered at the crash site, captured the sounds of the assault muffled by the intervening cockpit door, including shouts, loud thumps, crashes, and breaking glass and plates. According to the report of the 9/11 Commission, the hijackers remained at the controls of the plane but must have judged that the passengers and crew were only seconds from overcoming them. With the sounds of the counterattack continuing, the aircraft crashed into a Pennsylvania field, about 20 minutes flying time from Washington, D.C. The hijackers’ objective was to crash the airliner into either the Capitol or the White House. They were defeated by the alerted, unarmed passengers and crew of Flight 93. Almost immediately after the crash, visitors began arriving in Somerset County to see the place where the path of Flight 93 ended. Realizing the public’s need to visit here, to search for understanding and to pay respect, a temporary memorial was created on a hilltop overlooking the crash site. Here, visitors may gaze over the grassy fields, visually following the flight path of the plane to the crash site, an area now planted with grass and enclosed by a fence. In excess of 150,000 visitors come to this temporary memorial each year. This inauspicious Memorial has the palpable emotions of sadness, gratefulness and pride. I hope we remember the leasons of the past and are not doomed to repeat them and in this way we can honor these ordinary citizen's sacrifice. |
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