Flight 93 Memorial Unveiled in Illinois
Nov. 11--DECATUR -- Danny Jones, a firefighter for the Jamestown, Pa., Volunteer Fire Department, was on duty a few days after Sept. 11, 2001, when he received a call for first responders to help with an operation at the Flight 93 crash site.
"We were called to do body part recovery and plane recovery," said Jones, 52, a retired paramedic who has been serving as a firefighter since he was 16 years old. "They called it 'Operation Clean Sweep,' the final cleanup operation."
Jones, who lived about 160 miles away from the crash site near Shankstown, Pa., was given a bucket to collect scraps from the plane and flags to mark any tissue from people, which would be collected by medical personnel.
United Airlines Flight 93 was the fourth plane hijacked during the worst terrorist attack in history on U.S. soil. Everyone aboard was killed, including 33 passengers and seven crew members, as brave passengers charged the cockpit, forcing the hijackers to crash the Boeing 757 into a field, instead of their intended target in Washington, D.C.
"There were pieces of scrap metal all over the place," Jones said during a phone interview. "It was obviously a very devastating crash. One of those things you wish you never saw but you did. I was very honored to be there and help out."
One of the pieces made its way to Decatur, where it is now on display in a colorful memorial in the foyer of the Macon County Courts Facility, 253 E. Wood St., on the wall behind the security area. The piece is set back in its own case, so it appears to be within the body of a bald eagle, which gazes in the direction of an ascending aircraft above a field bordered by a forest.
The U.S. flag provides the backdrop, over the famous quote from Todd Beamer, the apparent leader of the passenger rebellion: "Are you guys ready? Let's Roll."
Chief state's attorney investigator Nathen Binkley, who attended the unveiling event Thursday morning, was in the Army National Guard the day of the terrorist attack. He said the expression "Let's Roll" was used regularly in the military after that.
On the day Jones volunteered to help at the crash site, the major pieces of the plane had already been cleared away. What was left were the smaller fragments, which Jones and others discovered by crawling around in a field, a reclaimed strip mine, and a forest, which had been scorched by the plane crash.
With the permission of authorities, Jones took home several small fragments, which he has treasured.
In October 2015, John Axe, a Decatur man, stopped at the Jamestown fire station, where firefighters invited him to park his rig, loaded with a steel I-beam from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Axe was returning the beam to Decatur to build a 9/11 memorial. It was obtained through the efforts of the George A. Mueller Beer Co.
"When I heard the beam was over there, I thought one of those pieces should go with that," Jones said.
Jones offered Axe the best piece he had, a 2-by-6-inch slice of aluminum with two rivets in it. After Axe returned to Decatur, with much fanfare concerning the three-quarter-ton beam, he wondered what he should do with the tiny remnant of history.
He contacted Macon County sheriff's Lt. Jon Butts to find a prominent, safe place to share it with as many people as possible. Butts thought of the courthouse, and then conferred with Presiding Judge A.G. Webber and the Decatur Public Building Commission. Dynagraphics Inc., was commissioned to fabricate the memorial.
Standing at a podium, Butts said the memorial was dedicated to the 40 heroes who perished on Sept. 11, after boarding a flight from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco. The four hijackers, affiliated with Al Qaeda, were also killed.
"Passengers decided they would not allow terrorists to fly their plane into any national landmark that represented our country's freedom, our country's honor and our American way of life," Butts said.
When Axe first handed the plane fragment to him a few months ago, he was deeply moved.
"It literally sent chills through my hand and body once I was informed of what it was," Butts said. "This might only be a small piece of Flight 93, but it means something larger to all of us: bravery and an unwavering attitude of what our country stands for, freedom."
Webber compared the passengers who fought the hijackers to sailors and soldiers who defended Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, when the Japanese military executed its surprise attack nearly 75 years ago.
"They were draftees in the first war of the 21st century," Webber said. "They fought back, and they won. If you go to Washington and see the Capitol Dome you'll see that they won."
Copyright 2016 - Herald & Review, Decatur, Ill.
