Primary Theme – Experience: The Flight 93 National Memorial provides ideal opportunities for people to come to deeper understandings of their own experiences of the events of September 11, 2001 as well as opportunities for younger people to understand how those experiences can affect their own lives.

Research Finding - When asked what Flight 93 meant to them, many visitors responded by recounting what they did, thought, and felt on September 11, 2001.

Supporting Description - Volunteer Ambassadors and rangers all know that many many visitors feel the need to share their experience of 9-11. An essential part of the visitor experience at the Memorial is not only seeing and sensing the place; learning about the events and actions of passengers and crew; relating silently or in other ways with fellow visitors; or leaving a special tribute of words or a symbolic object; an essential part of the visitor experience for adults is re-living their own original 9-11 experience. In visiting the Flight 93 Memorial now, and for many in the foreseeable future is not just an exercise of honoring and learning about history, it is also an act to re-visit the past—their own moments touching and living history. This will likely change gradually as generation replaces generation and successful interpretation at the Memorial will have to take this into account.

Sample Supporting Interpretive Theme Statement - Currently (2009) part of the experience for adults is remembering and often trying to come to terms with their own 9-11 experience as well as with the actions of Flight 93 passengers and crew.

Illustrative Quotes -

“Just remembering. That’s all. I was also working. We had the radio on in the warehouse and everybody was just like scared out of their mind that day…It was the end of the world…And then when they lost sight of the two planes, off the radar and everything else, we just knew they were headed for Charlestown, WV and that’s where we’re from. And if it got one of them nuclear plants down there it was going to wipe out millions of people….We didn’t think something could happen here like that. Because in my lifetime nothing has happened like that. But then you figure out, yeah it can. Because when they said they had hit the towers, I’m like, not that’s just not possible. Sorry!” [Visitors, October 2008, Conversation Circle]

“Well, just where I was at at the time this happened. I often wondered if that plane didn’t cross over top of where I was at. Cause when that happened, we had heard that they may be headed for power plants. Because you start taking power plants out which controls where (inaudible) a lot of the power plants in the East Coast. You’ve got Washington, Jersey all the major…New York, up through there. I’ve often wondered exactly where the flight plan was if it crossed over where I was at…Yeah, cause where he hauled into Homer City Power Plant they were under…Oh yeah. They were watchin real close. They stopped us that day; they stopped us and started stopping us and checkin our trucks. [Where was that?] Homer City Power Plant up by Indiana. Up by Indiana, that’s where we are from by Punksie, Homer City area. When they said it turned out Cleveland was coming back across, we wondered if its and they said its headed back down this way and right now we’re sitting at a power plant. You wonder what’s going to happen. You know you don’t know what targets after the three planes that hit. Ya know there’s something going on.” [Visitors, July 2008, Conversation Circle]

“…and I landed in Jamestown to pickup this passenger. We were just gonna’ go to Bradford from for breakfast. When I landed at Jamestown, one of the ground crew came in and mentioned that, you know, like, a plane hit, you know, struck the World Trade Center. You know, basically, it was a clear day, you know, like, there was no reason for it. I went inside. The TV was on and my friend showed up, so we’re, we’re watching the News reel and stuff and the next thing you know as we’re watching it, you know, like, the second plane had hit. Not sure. I can’t remember if the third plane had hit the Pentagon yet or if that was the second crash. At that point, airspace was closed, you know, and so anyways, my, I left my plane there. It was 11 days the airspace was closed, maybe twelve. But yeah, just, you know, just the chaos that was involved, you know, after the second plane, you know, the first one may have been an accident, you know, and, you know, it’s just, after, after the second one, you knew that there was an attack going’ on and, so,  [Visitor, July 2008, Conversation Circle]

“We lived about thirty-five miles north and had been involved with politics most of my life. I was a builder/developer and very much involved in Washington. I was president of the National Association of Home Builders, so with that you know, you spend a lot of time down on the hill and so forth and in the political scenes and just thinking about what would and could have happened had this flight gone in there. We happened to be sitting in Denver, Colorado that morning when it happened, on vacation. We traveled, my wife and I, and I saw the first plane go in the Twin Towers and I just couldn’t imagine. I thought it went by the building and when you saw the second plane go in and we sat there and the building crumbled and it was just… you could hardly believe what was going on. Then we heard about this flight and about it being in the air at the same time and it’s something that you’ll never forget the rest of your life. Being a pilot, I just couldn’t imagine somebody flying a plane in… my first reaction was, that the plane flew by the building and we didn’t see all around it. Then when the smoke started coming out… and the television and so forth….Later that day we left there and when we weren’t sure that they had closed the Denver airport and the traffic on some of the roads out there so… you begin to wonder what the impact was and then it really sunk in what it might be to our country. Then, as a pilot, thinking about the thoughts of flying this flight and what occurred and I have no idea really how much did occur with the pilots and so forth… I’ve flown an awful lot commercial, probably over a million miles in my career and as an office of the Home Builders… you just start thinking about all the flights you’ve been on and that crew and the lives and the brave people that tried to commandeer that airplane.” [Visitors, October 2008, Conversation Circle]

“I’m a school secretary and at that time I was in a middle school and part of our teachers were turning it on in the classrooms and I didn’t think it was appropriate because we had 6th, 7th and 8th grade students and some kids are old enough. The principal went in and made sure they all turned off their t.v.s because it was too much. It was too much for me to see later on so we opted not to. At the high school level where my husband is a principal they opted to leave their t.v.s on for the kids, but of course who knew. We didn’t close school early in the county, but of course everything gets locked up because you don’t know. It was sort of weird because all three planes touched the airspace in West Virginia so even that in itself, the flight patterns… not that it really even effected us, but it was just like, that was just sort of a different kind of feeling. [Visitor, July 2008, Conversation Circle]