Remembering 9/11: Journeying to the sites of a tragedy

Each summer I get a bit obsessive about having a theme for my travels. One summer, I decided to trace the  escape route John Wilkes Booth took after assassinating President Lincoln, while another mission took me to try and find the gravesites of the Lincoln conspirators.  Friends and family know that when I get that crazed look in my eyes and I start Google mapping everything, that a new adventure is brewing.

The Pentagon

For the last two summers I have been working as a tour guide in D.C., taking sweaty 8th graders all around our nations capital. The memorials are always my favorite places to take them to, especially the Pentagon Memorial. Even the most rowdy students are rendered calm and reflective by this powerful tribute to the losses incurred there on that fateful day in our history.

After having given numerous tours of it last summer, I decided that my new mission would be to visit the other two 9/11 sites in New York and rural Pennsylvania.  Although I do not personally know anyone that died in the attacks, after reading numerous biographies of the people who died in the Pentagon and sharing them with my tour groups, I felt drawn to exploring the events and the lives of those that lost their lives at the other sites.

After having gone to all three memorials over the course of two weeks, each one left an indelible mark on me. The 9/11 Memorial and Museum were both very powerful. The new museum is phenomenal and does a perfect job of reconstructing the events as a timeline. It is definitely not for everyone, because of the nature of the exhibits.  If you do go at some point, just be prepared to deal with the emotions that it brings up long after you leave it.  It has a way of staying with you. It reminds me of the feeling I get when visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum in D.C.  As a tour guide, I can only go through it once a season, because I have trouble letting go of it and frankly no one wants a depressed tour guide.  We always have to remain perky.

Of the three sites, I was not fully prepared for how I would react to the Flight 93 Memorial. It is in a beautiful and remote part of Pennsylvania and I was struck by how such a gorgeous location could be the site of such horrific tragedy.  The memorial itself is still under construction, although the main portion is completed and open to the public.

Upon arriving there, I was overcome by complete sadness.  I fully believe that some places hold a special energy to them, almost like there's an imprint left behind. The research that I had done into the lives of the people on board stuck with me as I walked along the long path leading to the memorial.  I was reminded that these were all just normal everyday people who woke up that morning, never knowing that they would end up becoming part of history in just a few short hours.


A large boulder marks the impact site and only family members, and I assume close friends, are allowed to go out there. It was decided that, at least for the time being, that location be a private area reserved for those that were closest to the victims.

Often, when I embark on these missions, they are about events and people far removed from our history. Usually, I will visit a place and then simply move on to the next destination. It was different for these places. Even though it has been several months since I visited them, the stories that they have to tell are still with me.

Tributes left at the Flight 93 Memorial