On the first Saturday morning of August, a U-Haul truck parked on Main Street in front of Baker’s yellow house. But the people who came in or grew up since then, who weren’t as affected by it? It’s not a topic of conversation.” “The people that were here and felt the shock and were involved the first year or two, they don’t mind talking about it. It leaves just a few people who remember Sept. This emptying-out happened so slowly, people barely noticed. Shanksville’s churches now have traveling pastors, who divide their time among congregations in four or five different towns. These days, sermons in all three churches attract about 15 people each, says Sylvia Baker, who led the Assembly of God from 1993 until she retired in July. But the company’s bylaws require volunteers to run a certain percentage of fire calls before they can participate in elections for president and treasurer last year only 12 members qualified to vote.ĭonna Glessner made her plea for volunteers to a packed church. The fire department purchased a used pump truck for $350,000. If it shrinks any further, people worry, another consolidation may be in order. The school is down to 280 students, half its enrollment from 2001. Twenty years later, those institutions of reciprocity still function.īut they are frayed. The effort made this western Pennsylvania town famous. Shanksville firefighters drove food, coffee and firewood up to the site three times a night. Because it did get cold up there at night.”įor weeks, this little town supplied a city’s worth of government employees. We loaded it into trucks and took it up to the site. So we all went to the fire hall to organize the stuff. “People were donating stuff, not just from here in Somerset County, but clear from Pittsburgh. They didn’t have toothbrushes,” says Judi Baeckel, who lives across from Snida’s Corner Store, Shanksville’s geographic and emotional heart. “On 9/11, the state troopers came with the clothes on their backs. Its volunteers are fast, well-trained and, thanks in part to donations after September 11, extraordinarily well equipped. When a barn burns, or when a tourist flips his four-wheeler at the ATV park up in Central City, everyone knows to call Shanksville’s fire department. Mark Lutheran, the old brick churches on Main Street, but families from the country stick to the Assembly of God, the newest church in town, built in 1961 just west of downtown on the road to Lambertsville. Families from town attend the United Methodist Church or St. They send their kids to the consolidated school, where teachers know their students’ families five generations back. For miles in every direction, the corn farmers and coal miners and bank managers who live in the hills depend on a system of reciprocity, a system rooted in the institutions of town. The town occupies a westerly bend in the Stonycreek River, folded into the bottomlands of high country. Shanksville is home to 224 people, 100 houses, three churches, one convenience store, and the most important event of the 21st Century. No more posing for pictures with politicians - Donna seeks neither fame nor credit. But over the last 20 years she’s learned: Only give to people who give back. They spun their cars around to aim downhill, marking the site of the crash with their headlights.ĭonna Glessner still gives.
Volunteers cradled the photo album against the steering wheel. It was so cold that first winter, so dark. Volunteers received a three-ring binder with pictures to help visitors get their bearings. They crashed here, in a field, 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, on course for Washington, D.C. The terrorists took control over Cleveland. It carried 33 passengers, seven crew, four terrorists, and 11,000 gallons of jet fuel. United Flight 93 left Newark for San Francisco at 8:42 a.m. That way, whenever tourists arrived, they’d meet a local guide. Nobody knew much back then, so volunteers kept it short. Donna created a schedule, assigned each volunteer to a different time slot. That place needs a human presence.įour months after the attack, she led the first group of townspeople up the hill. Outsiders are coming, they are lost, and we must help them. It was Sunday, and the pews of Shanksville United Methodist Church were full.
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