Flight 93 Ambassadors Show Love, Compassion
A portion of the plaza at the Flight 93 National Memorial site.
As Donna Glessner watched television footage of planes hitting the World Trade Center towers in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, a tremendous noise shook her house and rattled windows. Glessner lives about three miles from the reclaimed strip mine in rural Shanksville, PA, where United Flight 93 crashed. Like the families of the heroes who died on that plane, her life, like that of many, has not been the same since.
Immediately after the crash, clergy and laity from area, as well as staff from the adjacent Camp Allegheny, ministered to the victims’ families and countless mourners who flocked to the site.
“People were sort of aimlessly walking around,” recalled the Rev. Ron Emery, then pastor of tiny Shanksville UMC and a spiritual caregiver for the Flight 93 families. Although hundreds felt an obvious need to come to the site, they had no way of connecting with what happened there, he said.
Glessner saw a need to help visitors understand what happened at the crash site. In January 2002, she decided to recruit volunteers and asked Emery if she could announce this to their congregation.
“I knew immediately that this was the right thing to do and I was at a place in my life where I had the time to put into this,” Glessner recently told UMTV. “I didn’t know at the time how much time would be required or how long our services would be needed here. But I felt this was something I could do and I didn’t want to look back on this time later in my life and think – I would have done more, I could have made things better for people.
“I never looked back and I never second-guessed this decision. I always felt this real peace that this was the right thing to do here,” she said as she stood at site nearly 10 years later.
After the invitation to volunteer was issued at the church, 17 people showed up at the site for training. “Word had spread in the community, so they were not all United Methodist,” Glessner added, “But the bulk of them were from our church. After that first training, many more came forward.” Today there are about 40 Flight 93 Ambassadors.
One of the early volunteers who is still on the job was the Rev. Marlin Miller, a retired elder now serving as associate pastor at Meyersdale UMC. He too was trained as a counselor for the families of Flight 93 after the crash. “We first were just here to welcome anyone who came and tell them how to find their way out when they got into the place because we’re kind of in the boonies, so to speak,” he said.
“For the first two years at the temporary memorial site, we sat in our car or truck or whatever ‘til someone came and then we’d get out and welcome them. Then we developed a book with pictures and began with the story,” explained Miller.
Glessner said she and many of the ambassadors, regardless of their faith, feel that this is their mission. “We meet people from all walks of life here and that are hurting in many ways, often unrelated to 9/11. For them to be able to come here and unburden their soul to you… it’s a privilege to talk with them and you leave refreshed.
“ I’m not a person that runs around quoting scripture, but one scripture that has really been applicable to our group here is – from Proverbs: ‘He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.’ I felt a great healing, and I still feel it here,” she said.
“If you think the world’s in a bad way and society is going down the chute, you just have to spend time here and meet the great people of our country and find out how many good people there are and the work that they’re doing in their communities -- the way they’re serving their country in the armed forces or just in benevolent associations or through their churches. It’s a wonderful country that we live in and people really are good. And to find that out was a very healing thing for me, especially right after 9/11 when everyone felt such anxiety.”
In March, 2002 legislation was unanimously approved to make the crash location a National Park Service site. A planning office was opened the following year and the Park Service bought shirts for the ambassadors and gave them training. By 2006, park rangers took over the scheduling the volunteers.
Don Landis, Glessner’s father, was one of the first ambassadors and, at age 88, he’s still volunteering for one shift a week. Landis said the volunteers expected to serve until they were no longer needed, but added that both the National Park Service, which now cares for the site, and the United States say they couldn’t operate without volunteers.
“Whenever you’re my age – I’m 88 years old – you don’t want to plan too much, (but) as long as I’m well and can do it, I’m going to be up here, doing something,” he said.
Keith Newlin, superintendent for the Park Service in Western PA, said the actions of the passengers aboard Flight 93 changed history. They saved the U.S. Capitol from destruction.
The people aboard Flight 93 were “citizen soldiers,” he said. “Just think about it. In 35 minutes, they took the information they got off of cell phones from talking to relatives and other people and they took action. They were there. Some of these people were on recreational trips, some on business trips, but they took action.”
The site where they died, he added, is “sacred ground. It’s like any other battlefield we have in this country. There was bloodshed here; there was death; there was destruction and it was for a cause. There was heroism; there was courage and there was no thought given to it. That why this is sacred ground.”
Glessner has served along with Flight 93 family members on the advisory committee for the design of the memorial that will be dedicated in 2011. The group met quarterly over the years.
“We know that well over 1.5 million people have visited here through the years,” she said. “At this time of the year, we’re running between 5,000 and 7,000 people per week. “
Visitors to the site often leave messages and one of Glessner’s volunteer jobs is to read these and record what she thinks the families would want to know.
“People do have a lot of strong feeling when they’re here. I think they’re brought back very quickly to the day – September 11th. Their feelings of that day come back to them and they’re often surprised at the level of emotion they feel,” she said.
“It is a place where tears are shed, definitely. People sometimes try to hide that behind dark glasses, but you see the tears.”
Every American feels a connection with the people of Flight 93, Glessner said, “because they were just like you and I…..And faced with this extraordinary circumstance, they respond in this extraordinary way that can be very inspirational to people in all kinds of situations.
“That’s what I think is the power of this site. While it is their final resting place and we’re charged with caring for that and making it a place where people can come to pay their respects – it’s also a place where you can be inspired by that story.”
And, she added, it’s “a place that makes you examine your priorities and realize how fragile life is and how much every day counts. It’s a place that makes you examine what important to you and how you’re spending your life.”
Miller said serving as an ambassador “certainly lines up with the opportunity to share the love and light of Christ by caring and empathizing with people and crying with them sometimes, too.”
“As he put it, “We didn’t ask for this, course they didn’t either, but it’s an opportunity for us to show some Christian love.” People can make checks payable to the Flight 93 National Memorial Campaign and mail to:
The first phase Flight 93 National Memorial Plaza was scheduled to be dedicated Sept. 10, 2011. About $10 million is needed to complete the memorial. To donate or learn more, go to www.honorflight93.org or text MEMORIAL to 90999 to make a $10 gift.
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