BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News
SHANKSVILLE — Richard Guadagno and Mark Bingham never chose to be an unforgettable part of state and national history.
Nor did the residents of tiny Shanksville in Somerset County expect their town to become one of the country’s most vivid symbols of patriotism, selflessness and courage.
Like the rest of the world, that all changed on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
One day shy of five years later, in the grassy hills where United Airlines Flight 93, a fourth hijacked jet, crashed to Earth after passengers struggled with the terrorists, the families of Guadagno and Bingham, who were on the doomed airliner, joined with thousands of Americans in the same solemn tribute.
“The whole respect and interest is still here,” said Carol Heiderich, the sister of the plane’s pilot, Jason Dahl. “It’s nice to see they haven’t forgotten.”
Americans came a few hundred at a time, packing the small makeshift memorial accessible by winding, rural roads.
Some attached trinkets to a chain link fence, already nearly covered with hundreds of tributes. A key chain softly played a digitized version of the national anthem. Signs from groups based in Derry Twp., Lebanon and Middletown were visible.
Messages were scrawled in pen or marker wherever there was room. On a wooden panel: “Thanks for making our country a bit safer.” On a rock: “Love never dies.”
On a metal guardrail: “You made us believe in heroes.”
Facing the field where the plane crashed, people kneeled before 40 miniature angels, one for each of the passengers and crew members who died. Some snapped pictures, some prayed, some wept.
Joyce Gibson watched a butterfly float over the figurines. Fitting, she said, because butterflies symbolize rebirth of life and hope.
The monument “really is from the heart,” she said.
Guadagno’s angel was decorated with a plastic heart and seashell at its base, with a sunflower emerging from the top.
He was flying back to California after celebrating his grandmother’s 100th birthday, said his sister Lori Guadagno.
“They were all people like us, doing their ordinary things,” she said. “Except they did something pretty extraordinary.”
The Boeing 757 was bound for San Francisco from Newark, N.J., before it was hijacked. Believed to be going 580 mph, the plane left a 15-by-20-foot crater.
A $58 million project, which will be drawn from state, federal and nonprofit funds, will establish a permanent memorial on the site. The memorial is expected to open in 2011.
The temporary memorial draws 130,000 visitors a year, though a volunteer said visitation has spiked since the release of “United 93,” a film about the passengers’ ordeal.
Each year the memorial grows, said Sandy Dahl, widow of the plane’s pilot. Yesterday was her fifth visit.
The families find it therapeutic to be with one another, and to stand in the presence of the crash site, she said. It’s always an emotional occasion, but the families are coping together.
“Everyone was so sad when we started,” Dahl said. “Now, sometimes we can get a smile out.”
Several visitors said they were inexplicably drawn to the site, as if it were a calling.
“It’s something you feel you just have to do,” said Barbara Goodman of Carlisle, gazing at the chain link fence with her family. “Indirectly, it happened to all of us.”
For a week beforehand, Jerry Vogelhuber had a nagging feeling he had to come here, he said.
The former Marine drove by himself from Salem, Ohio, wearing black on a hot day for the occasion. He wanted badly to find a family member of a victim for a hug, he said.
“Through history, people have given lives for freedom,” Vogelhuber said. “This is my first actual acknowledgment of people like that.”
He said the site had a greater impact on him than he had expected.
“I’m looking down at that stone saying ‘United we stand,'” Vogelhuber said, gazing at a tribute featuring a waving American flag.
He stopped his sentence, content in his own silent thought. Then he smiled, nodded and softly added: “Yep.”