Gordon Felt:
Well, there's a couple of important aspects that we want people to take away as they drive out of the Flight 93 National Memorial.
First one, when they're here, we want them to learn the story, the facts of the day, to learn about the individual people, those 40 heroes that were on board that got up that morning. You know, on the morning of September 11, my brother got up and had breakfast with his eldest daughter. They read The Wall Street Journal. That was their habit.
And then he got in a car service to go to Newark Airport and we never saw him again. And all the thousands of people that died that day had similar stories. They just were going about their business.
We want visitors that come to this memorial to realize that it could have been any one of us that day. It didn't make a difference how old you were, how young you were, what your profession was, what the demographics were. That didn't make a difference.
And by remembering the individuals, by saying their names, by learning about those individuals, that makes it personal. We can relate to that. And then, after the personal side, in saying the names and remembering those individuals, it's critical that we also remember what they did collectively.
The passengers and crew members of Flight 93 had 35 minutes; 9:28 was when the hijacking began; 10:03 was when the plane came down here in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
In those 35 minutes, they were able to get information from the ground to understand what was going on, to realize that their plane was also going to be used as a missile, that, unless they did something, those terrorists were going to dictate the terms on how their lives ended.
Under that extraordinary pressure, they were able to actually come up with a plan on how to try to take the plane back. They voted on that plan. They prayed together. And then they acted. They fought to retake that plane. And while we know they lost their lives in the process, they did something extraordinary.
The passengers and crew members of United 93 revealed true heroism that morning. And, for that, we need to remember and honor them.
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