Flight 93 Visitor Center Tells Story of Passengers, Crew Who Died on 9/11

Sept. 10--Gordon Felt stood outside the new Flight 93 National Memorial Visitor Center Complex on Wednesday and smiled.

"It's exactly as we were promised," he said.

Felt is the president of Families of Flight 93 and the brother of United Flight 93 passenger Edward Felt.

On Wednesday, he led a media tour of the center, which will open to the public Thursday, one day before the 14th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"Certain aspects of what you will see are very powerful. ... It wasn't anything other than violent and horrific," Felt said.

"For the most part, visitors that come to the memorial down the line will be experiencing this as history. ... It's a milestone. It's been a long time coming," he said.

Headed from Newark to San Francisco, Flight 93 was the last of four planes to be boarded by terrorist hijackers that day.

The visitor center helps tell the story of the 40 passengers and crew, some of whom fought with the hijackers for control of the plane before it plummeted to the ground near Shanksville in Somerset County.

They are credited with preventing the plane from striking a target in Washington.

Felt commended architect Paul Murdoch for his vision, including a depiction of the plane's flight path and an overlook with a view of the crash site below and the Wall Of Names.

Murdoch incorporated a hemlock barn siding pattern into the center's exterior and interior concrete walls, mimicking common regional barn siding.

Panels throughout the center show how 9/11 started as a typical day.

Photos show nearby Ida's Store and the Shanksville-Stonycreek School, where the windows rattled as Flight 93 roared overhead.

Television news broadcasts from the day recount the attacks from the sky on New York's Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

A replica of the plane's seating chart includes seat-back airfones, which some passengers used to call loved ones.

Visitors can hear some of those recorded messages. "Echoes of the past," Felt called them.

Glass cases display twisted metal dining utensils and other debris from the crash site.

One wall holds portraits of the passengers, many smiling, proudly wearing their airline uniforms or embracing family members.

Debby Borza stood before the portrait of her daughter, Deora Bodley, and smiled through her tears.

"I'm inspired by the visitors. They inspire me. And Muriel (Deora's sister) will see the park in its fruition," she said.

Memorabilia arranged in cases includes handwritten letters, police department patches and stuffed animals. Some were donated by victims' families; others were among the 60,000 tributes left by visitors at the former temporary memorial.

Borza donated a license plate from North Carolina, where she had lived, printed with her daughter's name.

Ed Root, cousin of flight attendant Lorraine Bay, said the yearslong effort to build the memorial turned strangers into friends.

"We've become closer than friends. We've become family," he said.

Felt said the families hope visitors will ask themselves if they could have done what the passengers did.

He noted that plane passengers confronted the "shoe bomber" and that three young Americans thwarted an armed terrorist aboard a train in France.

"We like to think 9/11 changed our mentality on how we handle hijackings. ... It's a different world now. ... Sitting quietly is not an option any longer," Felt said.

Mary Pickels is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 724-836-5401 or mpickels@tribweb.com.

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