$225,000 grant to sustain Flight 93 oral history project

February 3, 2012

Heinz Endowments funding will pay staff for three years
For the Cumberland Times-News Cumberland Times-News  

SOMERSET, Pa. — The Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial has received a $225,000 grant from The Heinz Endowments to sustain the Flight 93 Oral History and Documentation Project directed by the National Park Service for the next three years.

The grant will allow project staff to continue recording and archiving the stories of those most closely connected with the hijacking, crash, recovery, investigation and memorialization of United Airlines Flight 93.

Staff will collect and archive official reports, photographs, video, media reports and other documents relating to this story and to the lives and actions of the passengers and crew. 

The Heinz Endowments has a long association with the memorial and has supported the design and construction of the memorial. 

Since the project began in 2005, more than 700 interviews have been recorded with family, friends and colleagues of the passengers and crew, first-responders, federal investigators, Pennsylvania State Police, American Red Cross, Salvation Army, airline and air traffic control personnel, people who had contact with the hijackers, media that covered the story, landowners and neighbors of the crash site, elected officials, volunteer ambassadors and those involved in creating Flight 93 National Memorial.

Official documents have been collected from many federal, state, and local agencies, as well as the National Archives. Information learned through the Oral History and Documentation project has already been put to use in creating training materials for staff and volunteers, preparing site brochures and exhibit panels for the Memorial Plaza, and developing educational materials for the park’s website: www.nps.gov/flni.

While more stories have yet to be recorded, project staff is concentrating on transcribing and finalizing the interviews that have already been completed. The staff continues to share information with the researchers and exhibit planners from the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum in New York City and the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Va. 

The Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial is a nonprofit organization founded in 2009 to support the mission of the National Park Service in caring for the final resting place of the passengers and crew of Flight 93 and providing a visitor experience that is powerful and positive.

Well over one million people from around the world have already visited Flight 93 National Memorial.  Since the first phase of the permanent memorial was dedicated in September, more than 130,000 have visited the Somerset County site.

A visitor center with interpretive exhibits is scheduled for completion in 2014.