Clockwise from top left: Location Function: Crash site/ 9-11 Viewshed: Panorama of the entire strip mine area where Flight 93 crashed, April 2003; Memorial Function: Remember/honor victims of 9-11, Temporary memorial at the site, April 2003; Sacred Function: Physical Remains, Land Bore Witness: Stand of Hemlock trees and debris field, Summer 2002; Event Function: Reflection: Flight 93 Ambassador shows a 9/11 scrapbook, Summer 2002.
Clockwise from top left: Images of Shanksville: Donna Glessner's church where the Ambassador program was launched; Yellow ribbons and American flags adorn homes; Marquee announces community events, has yellow ribbons as well; Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company house.

Event Specific
Land and People that Bore Witness

Event Specific Site:Flight 93 Crash Site, Somerset County, PA
Stewardship type: Partnership: Federal Government-Local Government-Informal Groups-Individuals
Initiated by: National Parks Service; Somerset County Commissioners; Somerset County Historical Society; Flight 93 Ambassador Program; Individuals
Maintenance: National Parks Service
Land Jurisdiction: Federal



Interview with Donna Glessner, Flight 93 Ambassador
By: Erika Svendsen and Lindsay Campbell, July 2003

Can you tell us a little bit about how the volunteer program got started and when?
We got started in January 2002 in response to the need that we saw for someone to be at the site. Local people going there recognized that the hundreds of people that were then coming really didn't know what they were looking at because there was no signage and there's still no signage there to tell you what you're seeing. And people were coming to the wrong conclusions, that maybe the plane had crashed right at the temporary memorial or that maybe the drainage pond that was there was the crash site because it was a depression of recently-moved around dirt and also the scrap yard at the top of the hill, people thought that was the remains of the plane. We've even run into people that thought the drag lines that are there were brought in to recover the remains of the plane. You know, all types of misconceptions. Plus the fact that many people were lost, there was no directional signage around here at the time. People wandering through town with maps spread out on their windshields.....and it just didn't seem right to ignore this place out here, while the nation was coming here to this very remote place. People were running out of gas, there were no restrooms. It was kind of a thing that had been set in motion and let go. So I waited awhile for some official entity to take hold of this, and then I realized that there weren't funds for the county to do this, and the National Parks Service was not yet involved here in any way.

So, Barbara Black, [of the Somerset County Historical Society] who is a friend of mine, she confirmed that yes there was a need for this kind of thing and 'go for it, nobody else is going to do it.' Because this was my social circle here at the church, my way to address a large group, no other reason, not that it has a religious tone to it or anything, I announced in church one Sunday that I thought there was a need for this thing and I was going to start volunteering up there on a regular basis and we were going to have an educational session so that we had the facts before we went out there, and would anyone else like to join me on a regular basis? And I had 17 people come out, not all from here, but by word of mouth it spread to other community people. We had Barbara and Terry Schaefer, the Shanksville Fire Chief, speak. And the two of them told our group the type of questions we could expect, because at that time Barbara was the only official person spending any time at the temporary memorial and she was encountering everyone's questions. She would go there to pick up tributes and end up spending two hours out there answering everyone's questions.

And that's how it is, especially so early on, people had so many feelings they wanted to unburden. They wanted to tell you about their experiences, as well as get the facts. They just really wanted to talk about where they were on September 11, how they felt about it, what they thought the government should be doing, how they felt about the Taliban. And we ran into a number of people who had lost people in New York or Washington and for one reason or another couldn't go there or didn't want to go there, and so they came to our site, because they could, it was accessible, or closer, or they didn't drive in urban areas but they could drive to a place like this, and so they were coming to Shanksville to grieve for New York. And we ran into also a number of people that were doing a three-part pilgrimage type thing. Maybe they were from New York, and then they went down to Washington, and then they thought "gee, I haven't had the whole experience," and so they would come to Shanksville too. So it was fascinating for us to talk to people, it still is.

So you launched this from this place right here, this church, with 17 people following in your path, has it become a more formal organization now with schedules and so on?
More so. Oh, we had schedules right from the beginning we were staffing only weekends that first winter until the weather got better. And then we branched out and added Fridays and then Mondays, and by spring of that year, we were staffing every day of the week and we have added more people periodically so that now we have 40 volunteers. We're there now from 10am-6pm most weekdays and 8am-dark on Saturdays and 10am-dark on Sundays.

So were you actively involved in volunteering before 9-11? Is that something you have in your background?
In general other ways, yes, that's how things get done in America. What would you do without volunteers? I'm a 4-H leader and I do a lot of work here at the church too, a Cub Scout leader and all that kid-related stuff.

There seems to be quite a volunteer spirit in Somerset County...
The media always says "wow, what a great thing!" But, that's how things get done. If you look around at PTA and little league and you can't just wait for government people to come and fill all these needs, because it wont get done. I mean, the National Parks Service has been great, but they didn't come on the scene until a year after September 11. They were in the background, I suppose, in ways I didn't know about earlier than that. Now they are providing some financial support for the Ambassador program to cover our expenses.

And will the ambassador program be a part of the site once its finished, I hope?
There will be volunteers, I don't know if they'll be called ambassadors. Someday, yes, I'll be replaced by a NPS volunteer coordinator and possibly any of the volunteers that want to can be official VIPs they call them, Volunteers in Parks.

More generally, not just with the Ambassador Program, if you could speak a little bit as to how your life has changed since 9-11.
I sometimes wonder what I used to do, because now things related to Flight 93 really take up a lot of my day: between the Ambassador Program and now working at the Historical Center and I serve on the taskforce that's working on the permanent memorial, and on the archives subcommittee of the taskforce, working on collecting documentation and personal stories of people. And my sister is married to the fire chief, and my dad is a fireman, it's just really a apart of my life in a big way. When we get together, it's what we talk about. Sometimes we try when we're on a trip, we'll say "we're not going to talk about Flight 93," but the first thing you know, we are.

I've gotten to know a number of the family members, and that's added a new dimension.... you know, whenever you meet new people it changes your life in subtle ways. You get different points of view. I've met many lovely people, even the media have been really interesting and nice people, not anybody I've kept in constant communication with. And I was able to go to Oklahoma City to tour their memorial as part of a group from here, and that was all done through the National Parks Service, and that was a fantastic experience.

Why do you stay involved on a personal level, instead of going back to the 4-H or something else?
The visitors that still come here still need our help, there's still a job to be done here. If I knew there was someone else who was doing it, I'd be happy to turn it over to them. And that's what I look forward to some day with the National Parks Service doing just that. And I'd become just another volunteer, not an important person. Last week, we estimated the crowd at 6,000 people....you can't just ignore that. It's not just going away the way a lot of local people thought it would. They thought "this will fade, people will forget."

Interview with Barbara Black and Charles Fox, Historical and Genealogical Society of Somerset County
By: Erika Svendsen and Lindsay Campbell, July 2003
Could you speak a little bit about changes in the county before September 11th? Not meaning immediately, but going back through the years, what are some of the turning points in history, some of the significant points for this area?
B&C: The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794.
C: That illustrates in a sense the cultural bias in this part of the state towards government. People out here want to manage their own affairs and their own lives, and they jealously guard the ability to do so. And, I work for the state, and there is a--I wouldn't say a distrust--people are guarded with government in general. It has taken a long time for us to establish the fact that we're here on behalf of the community. If you donate an artifact to the Somerset County Historical Center, it will stay in Somerset; it's not going to go off to Bucks County or Harrisburg or what have you. People very much do identify with this region and these communities. That trait was obvious during the Whiskey Rebellion and it's still strong today, though not quite as strident.

I would have to say one of the other major turning points for this region would have to be the construction of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Geography being what it is, and we're on top of the Allegheny Plateau, travel was not the easiest thing. Of course, the railroads adopted the area quite a bit, but really the Pennsylvania Turnpike is sort of what brought Somerset closer to the rest of the state. It made it a lot easier for people to move in and out of the region, and just in general travel improvements have knit the county together quite a bit more. I think people in the county don't necessarily identify themselves as Pennsylvanians or residents of Somerset County, they'll identify themselves first as residents of Freedence or Stoystown.

B: Also in the community, you will find generation upon generation has lived here, very long traditions, very long standing families are in this community. A lot of people didn't leave. Some young people had to leave more recently because of the economic situation here, but you will find most of the people you meet have families all the way back to almost the beginning of this area.

C: In many ways, I think, living in Somerset County is sort of a way to look back in time--to better times as far as family and community relationships go. That struck me greatly, coming in as an outsider. It took some time before I was accepted into the community.

That's interesting what you're saying about local identification. But did you find with Flight 93, that there was sort of an equal identification with it? How did people respond?
B: There were differing views on that. At the time of 9-11, I lived on main street in Shanksville and had for a number of years. Certainly this happened to Shanksville and Stony Creek Township, but the entire County really did rally and sort of become involved. Since that time, there has been somewhat of a decrease in involvement from some of the communities as time goes on and there's less to do, there's less immediate needs. But it certainly is still a very strong...its in the speech of everyone in Stony Creek Township everyday in some way. I now live in a home outside of Shanksville: I moved from "the big city" to a small town, and they told me that: "You moved out of Shanksville?" I bought a house. I said, I'm still in the Township, I'm just down the road! It's still a very strong community, it was a strong community before. The community around the impact area is even closer, people have....people knew everyone before, but now they know everyone even better, because now they've had to deal with one another daily.

So life, then, is permanently changed? We hear that a lot.
B: Certainly, I don't know how it couldn't be in that area.

C: To some extent, life has moved on in the other communities more so than in Shanksville, and that's a natural thing. It's a healing process....The people of Shanksville have taken the burden upon themselves of memorializing and remembering what happened on that day.....That neighborhood identification, that small scale identification, makes it a little bit easier for people to distance themselves from it if they don't actually live in the township or the town itself. It doesn't mean that it's forgotten; people cope with these things in different ways, and I think it's natural that many people want to remember and move on, pay proper respect, but move on. You know, life does go on. I also think that the nature of the incident was changed the way people deal with it here as opposed to in Manhattan, or even at the Pentagon. Because nobody here from these communities was killed in the event. People were more indirectly touched by it, we didn't lose family; we didn't really lose friends. And I think that in some ways makes it easier for people to become emotionally involved in this in a more positive and healthier way. We're not so much mourning, we're paying homage, and we're doing honors.

B: There's a real feeling of responsibility and a feeling of comfort for the people that visit here, whether they're families of the passengers and crew, or whether they're just ordinary Americans coming to pay their respects. And because we didn't lose our loved ones, although many people were impacted in other ways, we're able to more easily give to these people that are coming to us. And there is, from the community standpoint, a strong sense of responsibility...even if there are some of us that would like to at some point just erase it all from our lives, we don't. We know that there are people coming here, and we want them to feel peace when they come here, we want them to feel healing when they come here, we want them to feel comfort, and we want them to know that we're taking care of this...and that's from everyone involved. The level of involvement is different for different people, of course...the Ambassadors are very strongly committed. We've had a number of potluck dinners and picnics, and we've got one scheduled for two weeks from now. If you could see these people get together--they are some of the most dedicated community people you'd ever want to know.

Did you know any of them prior to 9-11?
B: Some of them. They're all from the immediate area, and that has been kind of kept that way, purposely because the people that come to visit want to know about us and how it impacted our lives and they want to hear our story and to tell us their story. That's what this group does well because they experience this first hand, its not something they read in an interpretive guide and are spouting back to someone, they felt it, they lived it, they can empathize with the people that are there.

C: The feeling is that the people who died on the plane are a part of the community, and it's the community's responsibility to look after them, their memories, and their families.

B: Yes, it's very strong. Very, very strong.

You mentioned the Whiskey Rebellion and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, events far enough back in the past that you have this time of reflection. Do you find it unique or challenging as historians to be trying to figure this out as it happens before your eyes: the temporary memorial pieces and so on?
B: Well, we try hard not to try and figure it out. Charlie and I have had discussions on this. This is not over yet, the war on terrorism is still strong. We don't know what will happen next. We continually have orange warnings. We don't know if we're going to have more. And there has not yet been a conclusion to this if there ever will be. So, it's very difficult to really understand the full impact of it now. Usually historians look back 20 years later or 50 years later and try and gather all the information and draw some conclusions. And it's way to soon to do that. That's one of the reasons why we all decided at the very beginning, the county and all the various groups, that we would save everything that people were leaving. Because it was too early to tell what was important and what was not. That meant that we were willing to take on a pretty big task not having any idea how long it would last or how big the task would be. And it's grown really far beyond what we thought would happen. We though that there would be tributes and that there would be people coming. But not at the rate that they came. There's still a mountain again, this summer...

We've been here four times in each season, and even in the wintertime, with it cold as anything and the snow high, we went out to the site and there were people there... and the ambassadors were out there too working in the cold!
B: They're there. Yes. This is all volunteer, and you'd think that if they had something more important to do, then they wont go out there, because maybe there will be people out there or maybe not... Oh no, oh no, they are very firmly committed to those time slots, and if they cant make it, they do everything they can to get someone to take their place. They may just sit in their car, but they're there.

Do you get more visitors here?
C: No

B: We are not encouraging people to come here, we want them to go to the memorial.

C: That was a decision that was made immediately; we have pretty strong feelings about. Organizations, people, there have been people that have tried to capitalize off of this. Our museum and our organization are not going to be put in that position. People cannot see the artifacts here. The only place these pieces will be displayed--with the exception of a few pieces that went to Harrisburg for a temporary event and a few pieces which were lent to the Smithsonian--everything else will not go on display until the permanent memorial is created, if we have anything to do with it. So, we're a farm museum. That isn't changing, and that hasn't changed. If you want to learn about farming, come here. If you want to learn about 9/11, go to Shanksville.

In terms of your trainings, is there any other experience or any other point in history that you drew upon to help guide you in what you would do, how you would make those strong decisions about how this place would treat what happened?
C: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was a real guideline, as was Oklahoma City. Those were the two instances, or phenomena, where the behavior of people making a pilgrimage to the site and wanting to leave things there really first manifested itself. That shows a difference in the way people want to remember and mourn. You look at the Jefferson memorial in Washington, D.C., and it's a different phenomenon. You go there, but you don't really participate. In this day and age, people wan to become more active participants in their history and the events of their days. We look at those two places for some guidance, and how did they deal with these things. But, it was really just Barbara and I sitting down and saying "we're not going to make the decisions for a permanent memorial, we are temporary caretakers, so we'll take care of everything." We don't want to put our viewpoints or impose our biases on this temporary collection and so impose them on a permanent memorial by choosing what to save and not to save. We save everything.

B: The only things we don't save are live flowers and plants. You can't. We have saved a few from some of the families, more significant pieces, but a very small amount. The flowers are just impossible. The other sites, as well, aren't doing that.

C: We do save every ribbon or card that comes with the flowers.

B: Every flag. Now, if a flag has a message on it, it becomes a permanent part of the collection. But if it doesn't have a message, or if we have just a bunch of artificial flowers, its cleaned, its put on the side, it's labeled, but as to what might happen to that in the future, we don't know. We're not making any decisions. Certainly, anything that has a message or is a tangible object is being kept. In terms of training or background, my training simply as a curator: I know how to take care of stuff. I know what to do with it, I know how to keep it clean... I worked in a conservation lab for a number of years, as well as collections. I have a masters degree in museum studies and the various training behind that. And I handle the collection pretty much record-wise pretty much the same way I do our collection here. That was just another thing to take care of. We treat them all as historic objects, even if they are a brand new, off-the-shelf, bought something that was placed there. It's now a historic object, and it will be treated as such. It's cleaned using conservation methods, using solutions and the same things I would use on a 100 year old piece, it's cataloged, it's given it's own unique number, it's tracked, it's stored in acid free containers, it is treated as part of a museum collection.

In taking care of this collection, in the future the collection may be culled. They may decide, you know, that 100,000 objects is just too much and some of these things are going to have to go. We just can't afford the storage or something, that's fine. But it's easier to get rid of something than it is to try and go back and find it again.

C: As far as what do I think should happen--there's a part of me that just really likes it just the way it is, because it is honest. It's sincere. Nobody, there's been very little structure imposed on it... it's just what people want to say, its just what people want to think, it's just what people want to leave, and it's what they have left... the end results of that thinking and feeling process have created the memorial as it is right now. It can't stay that way, because people move on, people forget. We've already got probably a million citizens of the United States of America that were not born on that day, or could not understand the events of that day. So there will have to be an interpretive component to introduce: what happened, how it happened, why it happened. And we don't even know the answers to those questions completely. And eventually, how we changed, if we changed because of it. This all takes time, and we just don't know. So, while there's a part of me that just likes it the way it is, the other part of me understands that it can't stay that way, and that it really shouldn't stay that way. But when do you say, alright "now." I wouldn't have wanted to see something built there a week after the event, or a year, or two or three. I would be perfectly comfortable with five years, ten years, by then I think we'll have a pretty good perspective on it. And as we move on, time does heal all wounds. The way we will look at this and feel about it will change. We just need to decide as a community and as a nation how we should look on this and how we should feel. That's my opinion.

There's a lot to learn here in Somerset County about the memorial process...
C: I think the problems that we're presented with here in Somerset County with regards to planning the memorial, while they're the same problems everybody else is facing, they're a bit easier to deal with because there are a lot fewer people involved. In terms of museums, if you're going to have an event that needs to be memorialized in a museum, well you can't swing a dead cat in Manhattan without hitting a museum. Come out to Somerset County, yep, we're it. Every town has a small historical society--again that community identification--but we're really the only ones that had the expertise and the resources to do this. And it wasn't really a matter of "do we want to do this?" it was, "we've got to do this." That makes it a much less complicated proposition, which is not to say that it's simple, but there were just a lot fewer people. And I think a lot of the credit for the comparative ease with which we've been able to assume these responsibilities is due to the County Commissioners. They really stepped up and took control of the situation, because it could've become very difficult. And they really took the lead. We've worked closely with the county for a number of years, we're the county's official historical society. And indeed one of the County Commissioners is on our board of directors and was a long-time volunteer here before she became a commissioner.

She told us she planted some trees here.
B: She was a junior historian.

C: She knew what we were about and what we could do. Its gratifiying, in a sense, that the community had enough faith in us to turn to us to do this duty. It's a lot of responsibility. But I think a tremendous amount of the success of this so far goes to the county government. The time is coming, I'm sure, when they'll hand off the responsibility and it will become the National Parks Service and the taskforce, that process is well underway. And certainly our role in this is diminishing and it needs to diminish. We've agreed to do this because we had to and it needed to be done, but we're doing this until the Parks Service is up to speed and then we'll be happy to go back to farming.

Can you tell us about the crash site itself?
B: There's a very interesting discussion going on right now in the taskforce because that is stripped land, that is not it's original state. That is not the way that land looked, and in fact it has been greatly altered. The township supervisors have told us that the great big hill was not there originally, that is a false hill from stripping, and its up some hundreds of feet, its been altered. So there's a question to the taskforce now about where the boundaries going to be, and do we keep the tree line from emerging on the stripped land, and do we keep it back because that's the way it was on 9/11 when the plane went down. But, it's natural for the tree line to come out, and the intent was originally for it to eventually be reclaimed. Where do we go from here? Do we keep it as it was on September 11th. And people come there and say "this is so beautiful." But to the locals, they say "this is a strip mine, it's not beautiful, it's a strip line, this is rocky, ugly ground!"

C: I've described it as "the far side of the moon." I find myself in the ironic position of advocating for the preservation of a strip mine.

Because it's honest, because that's the way it was.
C: Well, this is what it looked like at the time. It's just like what they went through at Gettysburgh, trying to preserve a battlefield. I will also say this, I think the state of the landscape there now magnifies the impact of that memorial. These people died in a not particularly inviting place. Certainly in an unpleasant fashion. And there are no distractions there. You go there and you think about what they did and what happened. There's nothing to get in the way of that. We want the memorial to be a healing place, but I don't know that I want it to be such a peaceful place that it glosses over the events of the day.

B: You wouldn't want it to be so beautiful that you forget the horror.

C: And these are matters for the taskforce to really discuss.