BELLS tolled 40 times in Shanksville on Saturday afternoon as the names were read of the 40 passengers and crew members who died 10 years ago after terrorists hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 and, with passengers in rebellion and slammed it into a field in southwestern Pennsylvania.

    This ground was “made sacred by great heroic self-sacrifice so that others might live,” said Daniel Coughlin, who was chaplain of the House of Representatives on Sept. 11, during an invocation at a memorial dedication.

    Thousands of visitors from across the country came to the dedication Saturday. They included more than 700 family members of the 40 who died, along with Vice President Joe Biden and former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

    The service, one day ahead of the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, was for the unveiling and dedication of a new marble wall listing the names of those on board Flight 93, who revolted against their hijackers after the Newark-to-San Francisco flight was seized. Their actions foiled what appeared to be a suicide mission aimed at the Capitol building in Washington.

    “With almost no time to decide, they gave the entire country an incalculable gift,” Clinton said. “They saved the Capitol from attack, they saved God knows how many lives, and they spared the terrorists from claiming the symbolic victory of smashing the center of American Government.”

    Saturday dawned with rain and dark clouds, but as the ceremony opened, the sun began to poke through. The ceremony offered the public its closest glimpse of the crash site since it was closed Sept. 11. The actual site, accessible only to family members, is an empty field blanketed by wildflowers at the edge of a forest of hemlocks and maples. A large boulder marks the point of impact. Family members are holding a private funeral service today to bury three caskets full of unidentified human remains from the crash.

    Earlier in the day, cars sat bumper-to-bumper for kilometers outside security checkpoints along roads that ring the 2,200 acres that have become a memorial park and is now part of the National Park Service. But once visitors arrived, many said it was worth the trouble.

    “It’s a small price to pay when you consider the price that was paid here,” said Cheryl Millward, 59, a nurse from nearby Somerset. She and her husband and brother had taken their own outdoor chairs and created a makeshift front row.

    Her husband, James, 60, said they came to honor the passengers and crew of Flight 93, who fought back against the terrorists. (SD-Agencies)

Memorial keeps Nicole Miller’s memory alive

    A NORTHERN California woman who has been helping families of United Flight 93 victims said David and Catherine Miller could not make the trip Saturday to Pennsylvania, where their daughter, Nicole Carol Miller, was remembered along with 39 others.

    Nicole, a 21-year-old community college student living in the Bay Area in September 2001, had just been accepted as a transfer to Chico State University for the following semester. Her parents lived in Forest Ranch.

    Miller was on vacation with her boyfriend in New York and New Jersey when she boarded the flight alone in Newark.

    Taken over by terrorists near Cleveland, the flight was reportedly being diverted to crash into the White House or the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

    Catherine Miller is Nicole’s stepmother. David raised her for several years as a single father before the couple married.

    Following the tragedy, the Millers became involved in preserving not only Nicole’s memory, but that of everyone aboard Flight 93.

    The Millers’ efforts locally resulted in achievements as modest as a bench with a plaque in upper Bidwell Park in honor of Nicole, and as grand as a hybrid grandiflora tea rose, developed and named in her honor.

    A scholarship in Nicole’s name at West Valley College in Saratoga has already benefited several students.

    (SD-Agencies)