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Sep 11, 2007 1:11 pm US/Eastern
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Victims Of Flight 93 Remembered In Pa.
SOMERSET, Pa. (AP) ―
A simple, solemn memorial will honor the 40 passengers and crew who died when hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field near an abandoned strip mine in southwestern Pennsylvania six years ago.
"As American citizens we're all looking at our heroes," said Kay Roy, whose sister Colleen Fraser, of Elizabeth, N.J., died in the crash. "These are our heroes and I'm glad that one of my family members happens to be one of these heroes."
Roy was one of about 150 people had gathered before the ceremony was to begin at 9:55 a.m. EDT, the time the airliner nose-dived into the ground on Sept. 11, 2001.
"When we get here, it's like it all comes back all over again," Roy said.
Bells will toll, and the names of the passengers and crew will be read at the site of a temporary memorial. "The ceremony will be brief, but solemn," said Kevin Newlin, an official with the National Park Service.
A separate ceremony, dedicated to the community and first-responders to the crash site, was held Monday night.
Flight 93, which was en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, was the only one of the four planes hijacked that day that did not reach its intended target, believed to be in Washington, D.C. Investigators believe the hijackers crashed the plane into a field near Shanksville, about 65 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, as passengers rushed the cockpit.
Sgt. Bob Witte, a New York City traffic police officer, said he was sick in bed that morning and went to work after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers. He said he has visited the Pentagon, which was hit by another hijacked jet, and decided to mark the sixth anniversary of the attacks at the Flight 93 site.
"I figured, I'd been to the Pentagon and I'd come out here and take some time to reflect," Witte said.
Visitors parked in a muddy field and walked up a small path to the temporary crash memorial site, which is marked with, among other things, small, metallic, red-white-and-blue angels -- one for each of the 40 crash victims.
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(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)