Published: November 06, 2009 11:00 pm      

United by Flight 93: Groundbreaking highlights local bonds with victims’ families

SHANKSVILLE — Esther Heymann was overflowing with grief for her stepdaughter. Standing in a blustery snow, overlooking the empty field where Flight 93 had crashed a couple of years earlier, she couldn’t stop crying.

The only other person there was a local man, sitting in his warm car. Every few minutes he’d come out, asking Heymann if she was OK; mostly, he just let her grieve. Alone.

Finally, the man approached her. His wife was making soup at home. She should come and have some, get warm, wait for the snow to stop.

She did, following a man she didn’t know through streets that to him were his neighborhood.

To her, they were the roads leading to her loved one’s cemetery plot.

When the jetliner crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, the people who live here and the relatives of the 40 passengers and crew killed were suddenly and inextricably brought together. That bond will be sealed further today when ground is broken for a national park, a permanent memorial to the victims and a permanent reminder to the locals.

“The families of victims of Flight 93 and the community of Shanksville have really become one community,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who helped broker agreements between landowners and the government for the memorial land.

The community began immediately after the crash.

Victims’ family members were brought to Seven Springs Mountain Resort and attended to by local Red Cross volunteers. School students held a candlelight vigil on the courthouse steps.

Neighbors comforted neighbors, too. Bob and Phyllis Musser, who live near the crash site just past a thick grove of trees, brought turkey sandwiches and coffee to the first responders. They would later become Flight 93 Ambassadors and talk to visitors.

The Mussers volunteer weekly at the temporary memorial. Bob, 79, greets visitors and Phyllis, 75, shows photos of each victim and the path of the plane.

Mark Miller helped his cousin, Coroner Wallace Miller, in the days and weeks after the crash.

“I think that the people in this community opened their arms,” Mark Miller said.

He owns the Pine Grill in Somerset.

Victims’ relatives often stay at Somerset hotels, and Miller has befriended many who regularly eat at his restaurant. Some are even on his yearly Christmas card list now.

Ken Nacke of Baltimore lost his brother, Louis J. Nacke, 42, of New Hope, Bucks County, in the crash of Flight 93.

“I think I go up there now to see my new family as much as paying respect to the 40,” he said.

“That town has helped me move on.”