The "Untold" Story of Flight 93

In mid-September, 2002, I traveled to what was then only a temporary memorial for the people who died on United's Flight 93 on 9/11. Even though it was literally on a hill out in the middle of nowhere, I was impressed by this rugged display mounted on about 5 or 6 runs of metal fencing. At that time, the only security for this temporary monument was off-duty personnel from the Somerset County Sheriff's Department.

I spoke with one of those deputies, and he told me something that I'd never seen or heard on the TV and radio news media.

He told me that state & federal officials were trying to figure out whether it was the terrorists who'd taken control of the airliner or the passengers who'd grabbed the plane's control stick seconds before Flight 93 crashed to the ground that Tuesday morning. He said that group of computer engineers had run several different computerized flight path projections of Flight 93's final minutes, but was never able to arrive at a conclusion as to who it was that yanked the control stick down, causing the jetliner to make a steep nosedive into the forest line of trees on that hill just outside the small village of Shanksville, PA.

What they did find out was that, whoever it was who yanked Flight 93's control stick down wound up saving the lives of 500-600 school children at the Somerset-Shanksville's school complex that would have been directly hit by Flight 93 had it not been diverted to have a steep nose down dive at the last minute.

While the passengers and crew all died in that crash, 500-600 kindergarten, elementary, JH & SH student's lives were saved that day.

The Shanksville-Somerset County School System's building complex is a set of three buildings in a sort of inverted U-shaped configuration. The building on one's left housed the middle school grades, the building on the right housed the the senior high, & the building in the center housed the K-5 & elementary grades.

Had Flight 93's aircraft not been forced into a steep nose dive when it did, the aircraft would have directly hit the K-5 & elementary school building from behind, causing that building's remains to be thrust into the senior high building, which, in turn, would have caused the remains of that building to be thrust into the middle school's building.

As it turned out, none of the 500-600 students ranging from age 5 -18, plus all the faculty and staff who also occupied those three buildings lives were saved.

When the school officials of the Shanksville-Somerset County School system found out about this, they arranged for all the students in attendance on 9/11 to line up to form the words "THANK YOU" in the complex's parking lot.

Then they had a Pittsburgh-area TV news helicopter fly over & have one of its photographers snap a picture of this outdoor student body assembly.

They sent a copy of this photograph to every family who had one of its members on United's Flight 93.

There were some additional copies made available in the local Shanksville community area. I was fortunate enough to purchase one of the few remaining ones in September, 2002.

That photograph of all those schoolchildren is still hanging in my condo today.