Shanksville graduates share recollections of 9/11 crash

Shanksville graduates share recollections of 9/11 crash
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_674809.html

TRIBUNE-REVIEW
By Mary Pickels
Sunday, April 4, 2010
About the writer Mary Pickels is a Tribune-review staff writer and can be reached at 724-836-5401 or via e-mail.
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On Sept. 11, 2001, Rebecca Shaffer and her freshmen classmates at Shanksville-Stonycreek High School watched on television as three airplanes, hijacked by terrorists, crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia.

Then broadcasters reported a plane flying over Southwestern Pennsylvania.

And the building shook.

"There was a fireball and flames above the tree line," said Shaffer, 23.

Some students hid under their desks. Others ran for the door.

"There was some panic, yelling and screaming," Shaffer said. "Then silence fell as we all turned and looked out the window. It was an eerie silence. People started to cry."

The students would later learn that United Flight 93, the fourth plane to be hijacked that morning, had crashed in a field not far from the school.

Officials say the hijackers intended to fly the airplane into a target in Washington, but some passengers and members of the crew fought back and forced the plane down in Stonycreek Township, Somerset County. Everyone aboard was killed.

The students said the crash rocked the sense of security in the small community of Shanksville, where all of the school district's 500 students attend classes in a single building.

In August, Shaffer and eight other students -- Joseph Skrinjorich, Amanda Duppstadt, Amanda Enos, Matthew Long, Jacob Miller, Brendon Noll, Laura Stutzman and Seth Walker -- representing the classes of 2002-05, gathered in their old high school to share memories of that day for a documentary.

Since 2005, Flight 93 National Memorial curator Barbara Black and oral history project assistant Kathie Shaffer, Rebecca's mother, have recorded more than 530 oral histories. Relatives and friends of the passengers and crew, first responders, eyewitnesses, residents and members of the media have told their stories.

Rebecca Shaffer's parents have been involved with Flight 93 since the crash. Her mother, a registered nurse and a member of the Flight 93 Task Force, served on the archive committee and as a volunteer ambassador at the temporary memorial. Her father, Terry Shaffer, is chief of the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department.

Rebecca Shaffer said she wondered that morning if her father was at the crash scene.

Shaffer recalled strangers and vehicles crowding Shanksville.

But "we didn't really look at them like strangers," she said. "They were there to help."

Shaffer has since graduated from Point Park University and works with AmeriCorps and for WQED in Pittsburgh.

She said she typically gets the same reaction from people they learn where she's from.

"Everyone wants to know where you were and what you were doing," she said. "That is not who I am. It's something that happened to our town.

"I don't mean any disrespect to the families of Flight 93," Shaffer said. "But before this all happened, it was still my hometown, still where we all grew up."

Joseph Skrinjorich, 24, a sophomore at Shanksville-Stonycreek on Sept. 11, is a student at Community College of Allegheny County and a member of the Army National Guard.

"We were still young at the time," he said in the video. "We didn't really know much about what was outside of this world that we had, here in these classrooms, so I remember having the same feelings of 'What's going on? This isn't safe anymore. We're supposed to be invincible.'"

Skrinjorich sang with a church choir at the first memorial for Flight 93.

"I've taken friends from college up to the crash site," he said.

Skrinjorich, who always intended to enter the military, said 9/11 reinforced that decision.

"It's not something I think a lot about any more," he said. "If I'm ever asked about it, I have no problem bringing up memories from that day."
Throughout the video, the young adults described the day the world turned its focus on their town.

Enos recalled hearing over the school's public address system that a plane had crashed in Somerset County.

"They said about it being in the old PBS strip mine," she said. "I just kind of started to freak out because that was in my grandma's backyard, and that was the only thing I could think of."

"You look at the world differently," Duppstadt said. "You do think it was only two or three seconds away from you. It could have changed your life forever if it was closer."

Long said he was overcome with feelings of, "This can't be happening here. This is America. This happens in other places. We're untouchable. And just that sense of security kind of being rocked."

Richard Snodgrass, owner of Snodgrass Industries in Pittsburgh, filmed the video.

"It was obvious they really wanted to get to telling their story," Snodgrass said. "It just sort of brimmed out of them. Each one had something particular about that experience that really lodged in their minds."

The school "was directly in the path," Snodgrass said. "With that load of fuel ... it would have wiped out an entire community's children."

The video, financed by a National Park Service grant through the support of the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund and the Popplestone Foundation, is available at
www.nps.gov/flni/photosmultimedia/index.htm