SOMERSET, Pa. -- In three days, nine people completed an almost unimaginable task. They sorted through 1,011 designs and came up with no more than five finalists -- one of which will someday become the permanent Flight 93 National Memorial.

The jurors, composed of professionals and relatives of those who died on the flight, said the task was rewarding because of the historical significance of their decisions. The finalists will be announced Friday, and there will be an open house Saturday for the public to view all of the entries.

The eventual memorial will honor the 33 passengers and seven crew members of the United Airlines flight that was hijacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed after passengers led an uprising against their abductors.

Monday, on the first day of their deliberations, each juror walked alone through the 20,000 square feet of designs at the Shops at Georgian Place, reviewing every entry. For juror Donna Graves, who concedes she was the slowest in the group, it took almost an entire day.

For Sarah Wainio, 18, whose sister, Elizabeth, died in the crash, it was amazing to see the breadth of the entries. She doesn't believe there was a bad one in the bunch, though, she concedes, "It was very easy to go through the first time and say, 'No, no.' " From there, though, each round of evaluations got more difficult.

In the second round, the jurors broke into three groups, and they got the number of potential finalists down to 30. Any juror who felt particularly strongly about a design had the opportunity to stand up and speak to the others.

"There was one that made my heart skip a beat because of the impact it would have on other people," Wainio said.

"Everyone has their own vision, and then we learn from each other," she said. "How can you get the right thing without debate and without looking at every angle of it?"

Helene Fried, one of the design consultants running the competition, had hoped the jury would have that kind of discussion. It was one of the reasons there was a mix of family members and professionals choosing the finalists -- so each group could pull the best from each other. They decided not to choose a jury foreman, so everyone was equal.

"The family members clearly held their own and were comfortable with the task at hand," Fried said. "It was a terrific group."

The number of possible finalists kept getting smaller, dropping to 15, then eight, until the group finished its work Wednesday. The finalists will each get a $25,000 honorarium to fully develop their ideas. One of those finalists will be chosen in August as the winner of the competition.

Wainio spoke of the significance of the competition -- the emotional magnitude and historical importance of it. Her goal for the memorial is that it helps visitors find peace, or answers to what happened that morning more than three years ago.

"It's incredible to me, people put so much time in," she said.

"Moving through it has been so much more productive and smooth than I could ever have imagined," said Graves, a historian and cultural and arts planner from Berkeley, Calif. She has worked on other national sites like this, including serving as project director for the Rosie the Riveter park in Richmond, Calif. Graves was most impressed by the number of designs submitted, which to her signifies the incredible power of the story of Flight 93.

In many cases, the distinction between professional designs and those submitted by lay people was clear, Graves said. Professionals often spent a lot of time in their designs dealing with the topography of the crash site. Lay people more often focused on the 40 passengers and crew members. The message they want to convey, Graves said, is clear.

"As individuals, we can choose to act, that history doesn't happen to us, we make it."