9/12 Also Important to Flight 93 Families

Private burial of remains from Flight 93 passengers will be held Monday, Sept. 12

The nation will pause next weekend to remember the horrible events of Sept. 11, 2001. There are dozens of ceremonies here in the Bay Area and possibly thousands of them across the country.

The portion of the 9/11 attack story that hits closest to home in the Bay Area is the people who died on Flight 93. The Boston to SFO flight had many Bay Area residents on board.

The group of strangers helped bring down the plane in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania which is a rural area southeast of Pittsburgh.  The 40 passengers and crew members lost their lives after fighting terrorists for control of the plane.

Many of the relatives of the people who died on Flight 93 will travel to Shanksville next week. There will be a large public memorial to remember their sacrafice on Sunday, Sept. 11.

But there will be a second, more intimate event held on Monday, Sept. 12.

That's when a private funeral and reinterment service for the unidentified remains found at the site will be held, according to the Associated Press.

The Sept. 12 ceremony will take place at what's called the Sacred Ground site in the fields and it will be closed to the public and the media.
       
In fact the entire memorial will be closed at 2 p.m. Monday to allow for the private service led by Somerset County coroner Wallace Miller.

Miller has kept the remains in three caskets inside a crypt in the coroner's care for the past 10 years.
       
At the service, the caskets will be placed in the earth at the crash site. Attendees will include family members, National Park Service officials and invited guests.

Below is an account of one of the last conversations from Flight 93. It is told by the operator who took a call from passenger Todd Beamer. Beamer attended Los Gatos High School and has many friends in the Bay Area. The operator said she heard Todd tell the group of passengers, "Let's roll," just before he hung up the phone.

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