Bittersweet Tranquility in Shanksville
On our way home from vacation in the Laurel Highlands area of Pennsylvania, we stopped in at Shanksville to view the temporary memorial for Flight 93. We usually don’t get over there, and I’ve wanted to go for a long time – it’s taken almost four years.
We got there in the evening, just in time to see about 100+ bikers and a television crew filling the small parking lot. (It was like attending a fashion show for leather gear.) Apparently we caught the beginning of what has become the annual motorcycle ride from Shanksville to DC to NYC. When we got there, we were barely able to walk through the crowd and had to park way up the lane; when we left half an hour later, there was barely anyone else there.
There was a tall portion of link fence (about 20’ long by 8’ high) covered with knickknacks and mementos that people had left behind as a memorial. The items, which range anywhere from hats and t-shirts to pictures and trinkets and figurines and necklaces, are taken down every so often and cleaned and stored in Stone Mountain. The on-site fellow (a local historian type, with a shock of white hair and no falter in his voice) said they’ve already catalogued and stored 19000 items and will continue to do so.
It was an odd feeling to see all the little crosses set up for each civilian killed there, with names I’ve known (Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, the Petersons – the last in particular because Cherie’s mother was actually close to Jean once, when she attended her Bible study group a number of years ago).
Gettysburg is a nice place but sometimes feels irrelevant because the events occurred so far in the past and have thus become impersonal. Everyone with a direct connection to that war has been dead for decades. The Flight 93 memorial was much more evocative and meaningful because I had experienced the events in question and had faces and names to attach to them.
I sat on one of the benches for a bit and gazed across the field towards the crash site. The temporary memorial is a few hundred yards from the place of impact but the area is so wide and open that it really doesn’t look that far away.
It was early evening and cool, with a kind wind blowing –comfortable, not chilly. The sun was setting, casting its rays over the fields. It was a beautiful place emanating peace and sweetness, belying the fact that forty people died when their plane accordioned into the ground at almost six hundred miles an hour. It’s a bittersweet thing, an impossible juxtaposition that such horror can be accompanied by such good and courage and nobility -- people who made the best of the worst situation imaginable, and saved the spirit of the nation in the process.
I can’t imagine any permanent memorial evoking a deeper positive feeling, and I almost wish things would remain as they are now.
I could have sat there a long time.
We got there in the evening, just in time to see about 100+ bikers and a television crew filling the small parking lot. (It was like attending a fashion show for leather gear.) Apparently we caught the beginning of what has become the annual motorcycle ride from Shanksville to DC to NYC. When we got there, we were barely able to walk through the crowd and had to park way up the lane; when we left half an hour later, there was barely anyone else there.
There was a tall portion of link fence (about 20’ long by 8’ high) covered with knickknacks and mementos that people had left behind as a memorial. The items, which range anywhere from hats and t-shirts to pictures and trinkets and figurines and necklaces, are taken down every so often and cleaned and stored in Stone Mountain. The on-site fellow (a local historian type, with a shock of white hair and no falter in his voice) said they’ve already catalogued and stored 19000 items and will continue to do so.
It was an odd feeling to see all the little crosses set up for each civilian killed there, with names I’ve known (Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, the Petersons – the last in particular because Cherie’s mother was actually close to Jean once, when she attended her Bible study group a number of years ago).
Gettysburg is a nice place but sometimes feels irrelevant because the events occurred so far in the past and have thus become impersonal. Everyone with a direct connection to that war has been dead for decades. The Flight 93 memorial was much more evocative and meaningful because I had experienced the events in question and had faces and names to attach to them.
I sat on one of the benches for a bit and gazed across the field towards the crash site. The temporary memorial is a few hundred yards from the place of impact but the area is so wide and open that it really doesn’t look that far away.
It was early evening and cool, with a kind wind blowing –comfortable, not chilly. The sun was setting, casting its rays over the fields. It was a beautiful place emanating peace and sweetness, belying the fact that forty people died when their plane accordioned into the ground at almost six hundred miles an hour. It’s a bittersweet thing, an impossible juxtaposition that such horror can be accompanied by such good and courage and nobility -- people who made the best of the worst situation imaginable, and saved the spirit of the nation in the process.
I can’t imagine any permanent memorial evoking a deeper positive feeling, and I almost wish things would remain as they are now.
I could have sat there a long time.
posted by Fortunato at 10:10 AM
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