Flight 93 victims remembered

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. - Last year, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Ken Nacke came up with an unusual way to honor his brother and the 39 other people who perished here aboard United Flight 93.

He would complete the journey they never finished. But he would do so by motorcycle.

Yesterday afternoon, Nacke and six other bikers, joined by a caravan of family and friends in cars, arrived here, the first stop on their nearly 3,000-mile ride from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, marking the route the jetliner would have taken on Sept. 11, 2001.

They left Newark Liberty International Airport at 8:52 a.m. - the exact time Flight 93 departed that morning - amid fanfare that included a blessing of the bikes, a reading of the 40 names of the passengers and crew, and a police escort.

Nacke and his family members say they are riding to remember Louis Nacke of New Hope, who was among those who died that day, and fulfill his childhood dream of a cross-country road trip.

"Always as kids, it was something we talked about doing when we were retired," said Nacke, 48, a Baltimore police detective. "Then, I combined that with the idea that we need to finish raising $30 million, and thought: What can we do?"

So, to honor those on the plane, they would embark on a "Ride With the Forty."

Nacke and his group - which includes his brother Dale and two cousins, David and Patrick White - plan to ride 400 miles a day and arrive in San Francisco on Thursday, Sept. 11. They will share their 9/11 stories with residents in communities where they stop along the way. They will also have a 6-by-8-foot memorial, festooned with tributes, carried in a van making the journey.

The group's first stop, 280 miles west, was the crash site atop a mountain ridge in Somerset County. A memorial Flight 93 park is expected to be completed there in 2011, the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The money the riders hope to raise will go toward the $30 million in private donations needed for the $58 million project.

One of the people the riders will talk about is Louis Nacke, whom everyone called "Joey," and how he got the nickname "Superman" when he walked through a window as a child and needed 100 stitches.

As an adult, he was an outgoing man, a compact body builder, who enjoyed good cigars and fine wine.

"He was in the middle of everything," said Patrick White, of Naples, Fla., who, as vice president of Families of Flight 93, has devoted the last seven years to securing the land for the national memorial. "He was gregarious but sensitive."

Louis Nacke was part of a sprawling Italian/Irish family that - although its members sometimes lived hundreds of miles apart, mainly in New York and Pennsylvania - was always together for summer vacations and holidays.

It wasn't unusual, White said, for 70 family members to gather for Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner. Louis Nacke's father had worked for the A&P chain and the family moved frequently, with Louis spending part of his childhood in Scranton before graduating from George Washington High School in Philadelphia.

At the time he boarded Flight 93 to head to a business trip in Sacramento, Calif., Louis Nacke was working as an operations manager for K-B Toys in New Jersey and living in Bucks County. He was 42 and recently remarried, with two sons, Louis and Joseph, from his previous marriage.

"He was so alive, so vital," said Patrick White. "He'd just started a new marriage in a town named New Hope, and all the promise of the world was before him."

When the caravan arrived in Shanksville yesterday, dozens of people had gathered under a clear blue sky at the temporary memorial, as happens every day, to view the wildflower-covered field where Nacke's plane plummeted to earth.

Ben Wainio and his wife, Esther Heymann, parents of Flight 93 passenger Honor Elizabeth Wainio, drove the leg from Newark to Shanksville.

Wainio carried a small, laminated picture of his daughter that he affixed to a wood angel with her name at the temporary memorial.

"The old one was pretty weather-beaten," said Wainio, of Catonsville, Md. "I want people to see who she is."

Their daughter Sarah, 22, strapped on a motorcycle helmet for the first time and rode along with the Nackes to pay tribute to her sister, a regional store manager for the Discovery Channel who was traveling to San Francisco on 9/11 for business.

"It was a very emotional day," said Ben Wainio. "I've always wanted to go to Newark and take the same flight, but I couldn't. Today, driving up to the terminal and driving away from it, all I could do was think about my daughter."

For the Nackes, the Whites, the Wainios, and so many others who lost loved ones on 9/11, September always brings new waves of grief.

Next week, the nation will honor the victims of the attacks, as it does every year at ground zero, the Pentagon and here. But on Wednesday, there will be a special plaque dedication at the Capitol - widely understood to have been the target of the Flight 93 hijackers.

"Joey did more in 40 minutes than many do in a lifetime," said Patrick White. "He and 39 other people stood their ground that day. We ride to remember them."

The riders will chronicle their journey at www.ridewiththe40.org

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