Protecting Shanksville
Nearly two years have passed since we stood glued to our television attempting to comprehend what had just occurred at the World Trade Centers. We listened in horror to transmissions that a hijacked plane was in our airspace. Disbelief was quickly proven wrong. United Flight 93 went down on remote farmland near Shanksville in Somerset County. The pictures were stunning. Little but a scorched crater. But there were pieces to recover and Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller has presided over the site ever since, painstakingly salvaging anything that could be found as he and teams scoured the 1,600-acre site. Miller this week announced his work is finished. The final search in July turned up “two or three handfuls of aircraft debris” but no remains, the Associated Press reported.
The coroner has said very few human remains were unearthed and that the land should be considered a cemetery. Shanksville is just as much a hallowed battlefield as the land surrounding Gettysburg and it needs to be treated with respect and reverence.
The scarred earth has healed. Grass and wildflowers now flourish once again lending testament that time does indeed sooth wounds. The shock slowly has worn away.
The coroner’s release of jurisdiction over the site should not be interpreted as a signal for scavengers to descend upon Shanksville in search of memorabilia. The land must be protected. An effort is underway to purchase all the land and for the National Park Service to erect a memorial on the site. This will take years to accomplish. In the meantime, the burden remains that of Somerset County to keep the site intact, yet allow people to visit and remember.