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Wednesday, September 11, 2002

By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

STONYCREEK, Pa. -- The return of the mourners who lost family members in the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 was put together with grand planning, ceaseless effort and relatively little corporate financing.

The last part, the meager corporate help, isn't how organizers planned it.

A few benevolent companies helped push the fund-raising total to "about $200,000" for an effort that the memorial's fund-raising point person said could cost $500,000.

"I never in a million years thought it would be so difficult. I'd seen the giving and the over-the-top generosity last year at 9/11," Sharon Detrick, an Akron, Ohio, businesswoman who volunteered to coordinate the fund drive, said yesterday. "I had a 98 percent rejection rate in Pennsylvania."

The fund drive began with Somerset County's decision to seek private help to fund the first-anniversary memorial service rather than let the burden fall on the 80,000-person county.

And the costs were substantial: setting up a stage and all the logistics that go with staging a memorial service in an open field, not far from the site where Flight 93 went down. There also were travel and lodging expenses to be picked up.

"We had family members willing to pick up their own," said Somerset County Commissioner Pamela Tokar-Ickes, who estimated that the memorial will cost more than $250,000 but well under the $500,000 figure that Detrick expected.

"We didn't want anyone to feel that they couldn't come here and be here for this because they couldn't afford the expenses," Tokar-Ickes said.

Detrick -- whose Akron-based business, Detrick & Associates Interiors Inc., designs offices for businesses -- signed on as an unpaid fund-raiser, buoyed by success in the field back in Akron.

"I have no problem asking the wealthy to help the needy," Detrick said.

But for this, few signed on.

Detrick said she got substantial pledges from FedEx Ground, United Airlines and BMW North America. Federal Express picked up the tab when she sent 350 letters, at $10 apiece, as attention-getters to corporate officials -- only to see almost all ignored.

Maybe they'd given to other Sept. 11 causes or closed their checkbooks in the throes of economic downturn, Tokar-Ickes suggested.

When 60 silver medallions were minted to be distributed to the families of Flight 93 victims, President Bush and four other officials, 15 were offered to corporate takers at $5,000 apiece.

She got no replies, Detrick said.

The memorial fund is banking with the nonprofit Community Foundation of the Alleghenies, 216 Franklin St., Johnstown 15901, and through Somerset Trust Co., Main Street, Somerset.

For her next fund-raiser, Hetrick said, she's planning an auction Dec. 6 in Pittsburgh of donated gifts, like celebrity items.

Her challenge: she's already gotten a response from the Cleveland Browns. "I haven't heard from the Steelers," she said.