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'Hallowed ground’: A look back at 9/11 attacks and the impact on Shanksville | TribLIVE.com
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'Hallowed ground’: A look back at 9/11 attacks and the impact on Shanksville

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Kristina Serafini | TribLive
The visitor center at the Flight 93 National Memorial as photographed Monday, July 19, 2021.

Here’s a look back at the TribLive’s coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in 2021.


Families of those on Flight 93, the Shanksville community and others forged resolve to see national memorial come to life

Fate threw them together. Two decades later, the unlikely coalition of Flight 93 family members, residents of Somerset County and the National Park Service that worked for years to preserve the story of what happened aboard that United Airlines jetliner met at the Flight 93 National Memorial, just outside of Shanksville in Stonycreek Township.


Shanksville remains small, quiet, but forever connected to 9/11

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Kristina Serafini | TribLive
Vehicles travel along Main Street in Shanksville on Thursday, July 8, 2021.

The question is typically answered with a generality — they’re from Pittsburgh, even though they actually make home about 80 miles east. But when a member of the tiny Somerset County community of Shanksville is pressed by a stranger out-of-town to be more specific about where they live …

“They’ll say, ‘Where’s Shanksville?’ And I’ll say, ‘Where the plane went down,’ ” said Robin Lambert.

Often, nothing more needs to be said.



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TribLive
Gregory Zaborowski, a National Park Service education specialist, talks with fourth-grade students from the Baldwin-Whitehall School District at the Flight 93 National Memorial on May 24, 2016.

Teachers rely on Flight 93 Memorial, personal experiences to teach about 9/11

For those who were alive on Sept. 11, 2001, the memories are often vivid. Many remember where they were when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Most remember watching the news, learning of the attacks as they happened.

But today’s students weren’t alive to witness the events as they unfolded. Instead, they learn about the events in classrooms.

Local educators agreed this is one piece of history they can’t simply ask students to read about in a textbook.


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Kristina Serafini | TribLive
Kyle Koval stands for a portrait inside the gymnasium on the Shanksville-Stonycreek School District campus Monday, June 28, 2021. Koval was using the gym’s weight room, which is now an athletic office, when Flight 93 crashed nearby on Sept. 11, 2001. He was in sixth grade at the time.

20 years later, former Shanksville area students recall 9/11

The morning of Sept. 11, 2001, started out like any other for those in the Shanksville-Stonycreek School District.

The yellow building in Stonycreek Township bustled with the start of a new school year as elementary and high school students went about their lessons in the combined building, completed art projects and vied for the Presidential Physical Fitness Award in gym class.

But at 10:03 a.m., everything stopped. There was a loud bang. The school shook.


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Kristina Serafini | TribLive
Retired Pennsylvania State Police Capt. Frank Monaco sits for a portrait at his New Kensington home Thursday, July 15, 2021. Monaco was one of the first responders in Shanksville on Sept. 11, 2001.

A lasting effect: How 9/11 impacted the lives of Western Pennsylvanians at World Trade Center, Pentagon, Shanksville

Frank Monaco was too busy to get emotional on 9/11. Capt. Monaco had been a Pennsylvania State Trooper for more than 25 years when United Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Somerset County, killing 40 passengers and crew members on Sept. 11, 2001.

If Monaco felt anything when he arrived at the site and observed the “big steaming hole in the ground,” it was anger that a terrorist act led to a plane crash that killed innocent people so close to home. But he had seen plenty of death and destruction over his quarter-century on the job and nothing was going to faze him.


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Shane Dunlap | TribLive
Barbara Fischer, a U.S Air Force veteran, talks about her experiences in the U.S military after Sept. 11th, 2001 at her home on July 12, 2021

9/11 served as a call to military service for many Western Pennsylvania residents

Aryanna Hunter, Dan Peters and Barbara Fischer were all 18 years old in 2001. The day before the attacks, Hunter was attending a community college with plans to become an elementary school teacher. Peters was a high school dropout, going nowhere fast. Fischer was already planning to enlist but just as a way to pay for college.

They were three different people, on three different paths, in three different places, who all saw what happened that day and decided to enlist.

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