Shanksville

With it being so close to 9/11, I hear a lot about Shanksville. I do not live all that far away from the city since moving here, and it seems to be a fairly sleepy town for the most part were it not for the tragedy that happened that day. I thought of Shanksville writing my last post as the site where the plane crashed was actually near an abandoned strip mine.

Every crash site from 9/11 seems to have taken on a different symbolism in American culture. "Ground Zero" will always be know to Americans as the former site of the World Trade Center and have a strong association with firefighters and emergency workers who lost their lives charging into the building trying to rescue survivors. This is sometimes taken to a fault as the multicultural nature of the building was lost in the tragedy. People from many places in the world died, probably some from countries that are sympathetic to terrorist causes. The World Trade Center was the WORLD Trade Center. It was not just Americans who suffered that day but people of many countries and this seems to be a neglected fact.

The Pentagon was the military site, regimented and organized. The loss of human life was kept to a minimum. The military does not leave itself vulnerable. The frightening thing was that there was loss of human life. They were hit totally unprepared and the fact that they were was scary. It meant that we were not as safe as we thought and the bad guys could come and get us when our scouts were not looking.

Shanksville was the site of the common man. There was still a crash and a terrible loss of life, but the terrorists failed in their objective, apparently to crash into the White House. This was the only plane where the passengers had the courage, stealth and fast thinking to be able to overcome the terrorists before this happened. As a result the airplane crashed in Shanksville, essentially in the middle of nowhere. Sadly none of them survived. Had they crashed into the White House, none of them likely survived either, but the loss of life and chaos that would have resulted might have caused irreparable damage to our nation. They saved our country.

They are a symbol of what average people can do when they get together and try. It does not take great strength, intelligence, wealth or power to achieve things if people work together.

While there is work being done on what will certainly be an elaborate memorial at Ground Zero and a very elegant memorial has already been built at the Pentagon, lowly Shanksville is just beginning to start on their memorial. They still have yet to raise the funds to pay for it. One of the hold ups was getting land owners to agree to sell their land to make the memorial. This is a conservative area of the country and people are very devoted to their little piece of the Earth. This is the only place I have ever lived where people regularly talk about living on "the family homestead." This is an area with pockets of Amish, Mennonite and Brethren communities that live off the land and simply are not used to this kind of attention. The "memorial" today still is a makeshift hodgepodge of ribbons, flowers and notes left by the visitors to the site. In a lot of ways more moving and bearing the pure emotion of the people who left these items.

But maybe the people on the plane who lost their lives would have wanted this anyways. Something more human, less exotic and more in touch with the real world. Something that represents them.