Michelle Obama, Laura Bush honor Flight 93 heroes

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. - Michelle Obama and Laura Bush led the ceremony on a windswept mountaintop Saturday commemorating the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which also marked a turning point in the evolution of the Flight 93 crash site from a scarred landscape to national memorial park.

As hundreds of family members and visitors watched, Bush recalled her first visit as first lady to the still-smoldering crash site 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh on Sept. 17, 2001, a time when "our grief was raw and our heart was heavy."

"This peaceful place was not chosen by terrorists," Bush said, in reference to the actions by the 40 passengers and crew to thwart the plans of the four hijackers to crash the United Boeing 757 into the White House or the U.S. Capitol. "This spot was chosen by passengers of Flight 93 who spared our country from greater harm."

Obama noted the "clarity of purpose" in the passengers' single-minded mission and willingness to make a sacrifice for people they would never meet. "They rose as one. . . . Together they changed history's course," she said.

The 9/11 commemoration was the first official public event at the crash site's western overlook, where families had their first glimpse of the place their loved ones perished, but which had been closed for many years.

The ceremony, with its solemn reading of the names of passengers and crew, the tolling of memorial bells at 10:03 a.m. - the time of the crash - and choral music against a rolling mountain backdrop, stood in contrast to the furor over the proposed Islamic center near the World Trade Center site.

(Two detractors, including Tom Burnett, father of passenger Tom Burnett Jr., have taken out periodic full-page ads in the local newspaper protesting "Muslim-inspired" crescent shapes in the park design, an allegation that architect Paul Murdoch has dismissed as completely untrue and many families view as offensive.)

Obama and Bush, who were joined by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Gov. Rendell, recognized the start of the long-awaited transformation of the battered landscape into a 2,200-acre national memorial park.

Earthmoving machines have begun to carve out the major features of the site, including groves of trees, plazas, walkways, and walls, each rich with symbolism honoring passengers and tracing the final path of the plane.

Murdoch, in an impromptu site tour Friday, pointed out a sample of the concrete mold for a memorial wall made from hemlock-tree impressions - the same species of tree as those that absorbed the impact of the crash and were denuded by the plane's fireball.

Murdoch said work was proceeding as planned, but he was reluctant to say he saw any light at the end of the tunnel - even to the end of the first phase of the $60 million project, scheduled to be completed for the 10th anniversary, in 2011.

"It's encouraging, but there's still a lot to be done," Murdoch said. "Clearly we've reached a major milestone toward getting completed next year."

The final two phases of the project, which include the visitor center and carillon highlighted by 40 chimes, are expected to be completed by 2014, providing the remaining funding is secured.

Even as a construction site, the park has logged 1.4 million visitors, and ranks higher in visitation than many established national parks.

Some family members were jolted at the sight of the newly graded landscape and piles of construction materials circling the "sacred ground," where the remains of their loved ones are interred and had remained virtually undisturbed for years.

"I don't know what to think of it," Yachiyo Kuge said through an interpreter as she placed a small Japanese flag, paper cranes, and Buddhist inscriptions on the chain-link fence above the crash site. "It's too early to say."

Kuge's son Toshiya was a 20-year-old college student on his way home to Japan on 9/11 after a summer of touring North America.

Ed Root of Coopersburg, whose cousin Lorraine Bay was the senior flight attendant on Flight 93, brought a small black-and-white picture with him on this trip. It shows Bay, who grew up in Bucks County, at her 1964 graduation from stewardess-training school, dressed in a crisp uniform with white gloves and a cap, getting her "wings" pinned on her lapel by her father.

Root, with his wife, Nancy; daughter Emily Schenkel; and 9-month-old granddaughter Lorraine (who is named for his cousin), fastened the photo to the fence, knowing it would be swept up with the artifacts later that day and put in storage with tens of thousands of other mementos left at the scene.

Root spoke of his first visit to the desolate site on a "nasty" rainy March day in 2002 and how he envisions it will look one day. "It was a crime scene then," he said. "I think it will be beautiful, and the memorial will have a focus. One hundred years from now, people will need that."

Obama, saying she was speaking not only as first lady but also as a mother, closed with a message to the young children of the passengers and crew - many of whom are now teenagers and young adults.

She said the heroic actions of those aboard Flight 93 should continue to serve as an inspiration to them and future generations.

"In having courage to move forward, you honor their courage," she said. And know that "long after you're gone, people will come here and listen to the echoes of those chimes . . . and they will see how a scar in the earth has healed; how it has grown back as a peaceful resting place for 40 of our nation's heroes."