9/11 Memorial Unveiled Honoring Flight 93 Passengers, Crew

On Sunday, a 93-foot concrete and steel high-rise monument was unveiled at the crash site of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania in honor of its 40 passengers and crew members who successfully made sure the hijacked plane did not reach its target during the 9/11 attack in the United States.

The monument, named The Tower of Voices, was dedicated to the heroes of the flight that was on its way from New Jersey to California, and features an aluminum wind chime for each person on board the plane, which crashed in the hills two miles north of Shanksville, Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Each wind chime has its own unique distinct sound.

“Together their voices will ring out into perpetuity, with this beautiful Somerset County, Pennsylvania, wind,” park Superintendent Stephen Clark said. The aluminum tubes that make up the chimes are 10 feet long, and weigh nearly 150 pounds.

It was the final phase of Flight 93 National Memorial building, under U.S. National Park Service, at the crash site, which is a 2,200-acre memorial now. A visitors center was built there three years ago, and a plaza was opened at the spot in 2011, the 10th anniversary of the incident.

Sept. 11, 2001, marks a huge tragedy in American history. The 9/11 attacks saw about 3,000 casualties and more than 6,000 injured in a single day. Four planes were hijacked that day, of which two crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, the third crashed into the Pentagon in Virginia. The fourth one, Flight 93, which was headed to Washington, D.C., crashed near Stonycreek Township in Pennsylvania after the passengers and crew members stormed the cockpit in an attempt to thwart the attack.

When the passengers onboard the flight were made aware of the hijacking, they immediately made calls to their loved ones. Some learned of the attacks which were happening all over the country and realized the plane was on a suicide mission.

“When they learned that, it galvanized them as a group,” Clark said. “They said, ‘We’re not going back to any airport. This is a suicide mission.’”

Some passengers and crew members discussed the situation and arrived at the conclusion they would try to reclaim the plane. The group raced toward the cockpit and a fight ensued. Soon, it crashed, making Flight 93 the only plane to not reach its target that day. The crash ignited 100 hemlock trees nearby, and for that reason, the tree was used as symbols in the design of the memorial, Daily Mail reported.

According to the architect behind the monument, Paul Murdoch, the newly unveiled structure was vital to remember the voices of those who sacrificed their lives that day.

“These chimes respond to unanswered cries of voices not spoken again, but remembered in the vibrations of a monumental tower. … We wanted to do, I’ll call it a living memorial in sound because the last memory of many of the people on the plane were through their voices on phone calls,” Murdoch said. “And we wanted to use the natural forces of the site to activate the chimes.”

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump is expected to attend the memorial service for the passengers and crew in Shanksville. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke are also expected at the memorial.