Monuments
(The Makeshift Memorial)
It has been more than seven years since United Airlines Flight 93 went into the ground on the south-central plateau of Pennsylvania. There is no formal monument at the petered-out strip mine where it crashed. It is lot closer to one of those home-made highway memorials. The reclaimed soil is covered with thin grass over hard rock.
The field is in the news this morning because the families of the dead are asking President Bush to intercede and confiscate the land as one of his last acts in office. It is unknown at this point what, if anything, he will do. These must be a pretty intoxicating time to be President, when you still have the executive powers and no accountability whatsoever.
I haven’t stopped to visit, though I have been tempted several times, driving past Somerset Exit 110 on the PA Turnpike. There is something about getting off the toll road that makes it more significant than getting off the ordinary highway. Maybe it is the interaction with the person in the toll-booth, and taking the ticket again from the machine in the gate when you return to the hermetically-sealed highway.
Traveling along Pennsylvania and Ohio that way, and stopping only at the state-approved identical plazas for gas and coffee, is the automotive equivalent of being sequestered in an airliner.
The last chance I could have pulled over was at Thanksgiving this year, but it was cold and dark, and I did not want to stay the night. The last time I saw it was from the window of a Northwest Flight last week, following the same flight path. The hijackers took flight 93 as it was approaching Lake Erie, enroute San Francisco.
I have printed the directions and keep them in the glove compartments of the Hubrismolie just in case I have time on my hands and happen to be on that strip of concrete. It is a bit of a jaunt, since the turnpike is not intended to let you on and off where you wish.
From the Somerset toll plaza, head straight to the third traffic light, and then turn north on PA Rt 281 for ten miles to Stoystown. At the junction with US 30, hand a right for three miles and drive three miles to the Highland Tank Manufacturing Plant. Turn right onto Lambertsville Rd, and look for the white sign reading "Temporary Flight 93 Memorial."
There is an arrow pointing towards the road you need to take, and about two miles on, take the left on Skyline Rd. The crash site is about a mile up the road, on the right.
Efforts to buy the site for a national Flight 93 memorial have been embroiled with controversy. A fancy design was proposed and and conspiracy theorists pounced on it the $56 million dollar project as a crypto-tribute to the jihadis. Something about the crescent shape, apparently, though I don't know about that. It also bogged down in federal red tape and a protracted land dispute with the owner.
I imagine this is a microcosm of what happened in the days after the Civil War. Farmers and legitimate land-owners wanted to go back to tilling the soil that they owned, and did not feel themselves responsible for the fact that thousands of people had trespassed on their property in order to die on it.
The delays have prompted an advocacy group, Families of Flight 93, to ask President Bush to intervene personally in his final weeks in office and to allow the federal government to seize the land needed for the memorial and to allocate part of the money for the project. The designated bad guy in this movie is named Mike Svonavec, who owns the eponymous Svonavec, Inc.,which owns the land. He feels he is being demonized by the National Park Service and Flight 93 groups.
According to this morning's reporting, Mike has turned down a $250,000 offer from the Park Service, as well as $750,000 from Families of Flight 93.
I have no idea what he thinks he might do with the property besides let it be. Flight 93 rolled into the field, inverted and steep, at over 550 miles an hour. The impact left a crater eight to ten feet deep and thirty to fifty feet wide. The flight recorder was later found at a depth of 25 feet, and the remains of the passengers, crew and hi-jackers were spread across 70 acres.
Somerset County Coroner Wally Miller has one of those jobs that is pretty sleepy, most of the time. An event like this is severely stressful, what with all the Feds swarming in and he still having jurisdiction for what is both a disaster and crime site. Wally estimated to the 9/11 Commission that they found about ten percent of the remains.
To me, the issue is pretty simple. The acreage around the crash site is a cemetery. If I was Mike, I think I would accept things as an act of God, and try to look gracious.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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