Keeping the story of Flight 93 alive, as living memories become fewer

A pair of blue baseball-patterned boxer shorts takes the center of a display case at the Flight 93 National Memorial museum.

If the underwear seems out of place, not far from where the airliner came to earth Sept. 11, 2001, near Shanksville, Somerset County, that’s part of the point. 

It tells a story from the life of passenger Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas, who persuaded her colleagues at PricewaterhouseCoopers to wear brightly colored shorts over their business suits to a boardroom meeting with execs from whimsical underwear maker Joe Boxer.

Her move convinced the company’s CEO that Grandcolas’ team understood their products and won them the job.

“I can’t think of anything that you could put in there that would make her more proud,” her husband Jack Grandcolas later told National Park Service staff.

Betsy Keene, curator at the memorial and three other NPS sites in western Pennsylvania, said that made Grandcolas’ shorts a clear choice to include in one of several new displays at the memorial.

They feature personal effects of the 40 passengers and crew who fought to keep the hijacked Boeing 757 — which investigators believe the four attackers aboard planned to crash into the U.S. Capitol — from becoming another weapon against the United States on 9/11.

”I just want people to see something that will help them relate to the story, that will tie them in,” Keene said of the selections in the cases, which are the first official expansions of the museum’s exhibits since it opened in 2015. 

Twenty-five years after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 into a reclaimed coal mine in Stonycreek Township, the memory of the day is still strong with those who lived through it. 

But for around 100 million Americans born after 9/11, and millions more born in the years shortly before, that day that shifted the nation’s course is an abstract day in history. 

Stephen Clark, superintendent of the Flight 93 memorial, said that aspect sets it apart from other memorials in the national park system.

“I like to use the word raw,” he said. “It’s as if it just happened yesterday.”

And despite that, it tends to be the 9/11 site that’s overlooked amid replays of the abject horror of the twin towers – beacons of the nation’s financial might – and the headquarters of its military afire and collapsing, Clark said.

“This is real, and our rangers, and our staff, and our ambassadors come in contact on a daily basis with people who are part of this story of 9/11,” he added.

Increasingly, the memorial’s role is to teach, in addition to commemorating, how the passengers and flight crew made a desperate decision to fight for their lives and succeeded in preventing an attack on American democracy itself. 

Even newer members of the federal law enforcement and intelligence communities, with whom the park staff work regularly, sometimes don’t have vivid memories of 9/11, Clark said.

“I want them to come here and feel this place, and understand what happened here and the bravery aboard that airplane, to motivate them for their entire career to ensure that they do everything they can to never have another 9/11,” he said. “It’s a daunting task.”

The mission to educate visitors happens every day, Clark said, but on Friday the Flight 93 memorial will host its observance of the 25th anniversary of the attacks. Each year it begins at the Wall of Names with a reading of the 40 names timed to coincide with the moment the plane crashed at 9:03 a.m. 

At 1 p.m. a public ceremony will begin featuring music by the Somerset County Youth Chorus and remarks by retired United Airlines Capt. Morrie Weiner, who flew Flight 93’s Newark to San Francisco run for a decade before retiring 10 days before the attacks; Gordon Felt, whose brother Edward Felt was a passenger; Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Keeping Flight 93 stories alive

Every year since 2003, Scott Marsh has led a trip for eighth grade students at Mechanicsburg Middle School in western Ohio, where he teaches social studies, to the Flight 93 memorial and then on to Washington, D.C.

“Those kids had that memory,” Marsh said of the first students he took on the trip more than two decades ago. “And as every year went by, [his students] remembered less because we were moving away from that time.”

Now, when Marsh brings his classes to the memorial, concepts like love and sacrifice and courage are what bind them to the story of Flight 93. Marsh said he can see when the story’s significance clicks into place.

“They get really quiet and then they look at you. I mean, they stare right at you as you’re telling the story, or you’re telling them what I want from them and why it’s important,” he said. “And you know, usually eighth grade kids are kind of all over the place. But they are totally locked in.”

Marsh said his students find it particularly impactful to learn Grandcolas was pregnant and to find the almost ghostly inscription “and unborn child” carved in the wall of names beside hers. 

At least 40 states have either required or suggest that public schools teach students about 9/11, according to the Associated Press. Pennsylvania passed a law in 2024 that requires schools to hold a moment of silence each anniversary and requiring the state Department of Education to provide a model curriculum on 9/11

On an August morning, Diana Bigwood of Greencastle, Franklin County, strolled the memorial plaza overlooking the wildflower-filled field where the impact of Flight 93 is marked with a red-hued boulder. She spoke softly to her great-grandson Ryker as they walked.

“There’s too many of his little friends that when we say we’re going to the Flight 93 memorial,  they don’t even know what you’re talking about,” she said.

Bigwood said the memorial is an emotional place. She said she cries every time she visits and can no longer stand to listen to recordings of the passengers’ last messages left via the plane’s on-board AirFones.

If youngsters like Ryker don’t learn the stories of 9/11, the nation risks losing pride in its first responders and the vigilance to stop another attack, she said. 

“I’m so proud of the people that yes, they lost their lives, but look how many more people, had they went to their destination in D.C., … could have died that day,” she said.

David Beamer, father of Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer, said he shares concerns that young people aren’t learning about the actions of his son and fellow passengers. Todd Beamer was one of a handful of passengers able to make a phone call after the plane was hijacked. 

He relayed information about the hijacking and the passengers’ and flight attendants’ plan to fight back to a telephone operator, who he also asked to pray with him. She later relayed his final words, “Are you guys ready? Okay. Let’s roll,” as they advanced toward the cockpit. His words became a slogan of national resolve in the days and weeks that followed.

“I believe that plane was headed to the nation’s capital, and the damage and the loss of life would have been another big big win for our enemies,” David Beamer said. “It didn’t happen because regular people became soldiers that day … The blessing is they had the opportunity to fight back, and they did.”

Beamer said he used to fly around the country speaking to school groups. At 84, he’s cut back on travel but still speaks at church events. He noted there are a number of groups including the 9:57 Project, founded by veterans and educators to connect with young people and carry on the legacy of Flight 93. 

This Sept. 11, Beamer said he will attend the ceremony at the memorial for the first time and read his son’s name.

“We’ve been to the memorial many times, but we choose to go on quieter days,” he said.  “I determined this time I’m going to read. I’m gonna say Todd Beamer, and it’s the time in the program that we’re remembering each individual, so I felt like I wanted to do it this year.”

Teaching 9/11

Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial was founded in 2009 to keep the story and the memorial meaningful and relevant for generations to come, Executive Director Donna Gibson said. It works hand-in-hand with the National Park Service to provide programming and volunteers.

For several years the organization has held the National Day of Learning to Teach to Remember 9/11, which has now evolved into two weeks of programs, curriculum and lessons for teachers. 

In June, Gibson said, it held a symposium for educators from around Pennsylvania where teachers were placed in groups and asked to create lesson plans. 

“We found that we were coming to this point where you had people who had the lived experience that really didn’t know how to manage their emotions in the classroom because it was such a horrific day for them, and they didn’t want to scare their students by being upset,” she said.

From that event, two lesson plans were selected to be made available to educators across the country. One has students design a military-style challenge coin depicting on one side what defines them as a person — community, environment and education, for example — and then research a passenger or crew member and do the same for them on the other side.

A second lesson has students create a passport for people enmeshed in the Flight 93 story by researching their lives and finding connections to other passengers, crew or family members. The feedback from teachers has been positive, she said.

“They were surprised, one, their students never heard of Flight 93,” Gibson said. “And two, how engaged they were with the whole project, learning about the passenger, learning about the person that was in their passport.”

Beyond the challenges of time, distance and teachers’ comfort levels with the subject matter, impressing the significance of 9/11 as a world-changing event presents a challenge of making it immediately relevant to students’ lives, said Adam Shaffer, a Shanksville native and chief of interpretation and education at the memorial. 

“First is connecting with other relevant, significant world and national events that have directly impacted them, because that’s something that they all have at least some level of exposure to,” Shaffer said, noting that many have family members who served in Iraq or Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror.

Another touchstone he said is relatable for some students is the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s just a ‘you know where you were at whenever it happened,’ kind of a moment,” Shaffer said.

Park rangers also use current events to show the effects of 9/11 are still echoing through society, Shaffer said, noting that a victim of the World Trade Center attack was identified last month.

He added that some of those responsible for the attacks are still facing trials. A trial for one of the men who plotted the attacks was, last month, scheduled to begin in June 2028

“There are still pieces of the 9/11 story 25 years ago that are still here and tangible and very real in the world that they’re growing up with, and I think it’s those connecting points that draw them into wanting to understand more than about that day,” he said. 

Today’s students, who don’t know a world without smartphones, also engage with the communications aspects of the Flight 93 story and how different it was in 2001.

Because Flight 93 took off from the Newark, New Jersey, airport late, the passengers learned about the planes that had struck the World Trade Center and realized the hijackers aboard their plane didn’t intend to land safely. They did so using credit card-activated seatback AirFones that many airliners had before cellphones were ubiquitous.

“While they didn’t have the supercomputer that we have in our hands right now … the passengers and crew were just also able to do that using the technology of that time,” Shaffer said.

New connections to the passengers and crew

Among the exhibits in the visitor center museum is a simple white cordless phone with an answering machine, doubtless similar to those where some of the passengers left their final words to loved ones. 

That’s one of tens of thousands of items in the park’s collection, most of which have never been displayed. 

Through a $2.3 million donation to the National Park Foundation specifically for enhancing visitors’ experiences at the memorial before the anniversary, the park service was able to purchase several new display cases to allow some of those artifacts to be shown for the first time.

They include paper, textile and leather objects recovered from the crash site that are too fragile to be exposed to the light of day that will be housed in cabinets with special electronic light-blocking glass. One item is passenger Nicole Miller’s driver’s license that became fused with a piece of the fuselage in the heat and violence of the crash. 

“It’s a very, very personal object because it’s a driver’s license, but also it reflects that violence, and so it’s a remarkable sort of thing that does both parts of that story at once,” Keene said.

Others include clothing and personal effects from the lives the passengers and crew had hoped to return to on their flight. In one case, the freshly dry cleaned uniform of flight attendant Lorraine G. Bay stands next to the wrinkled field jacket of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Richard J. Guadagno, who was returning from a trip to visit family in New Jersey.

Beneath it, Guadagno’s day planner, yellowed with age, is open to Sept. 11, 2001, with the annual leave he used for the trip penciled in.

“It’s actually a ‘Far Side’ calendar, which always makes me chuckle,” she said, referring to the absurd science and animal themed comic strip popular in the 1990s. “Again it’s one of those little details that sort of twinkle at you that help you get drawn in.”