Remembrance of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will begin tonight in Somerset County, where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville as 40 passengers and crew members prevented the hijacked plane from reaching the nation's capital.

The National Park Service, the Families of Flight 93 and the Partners of the Flight 93 National Memorial will kick off a two-day event, open to the public, with a commemorative service at Somerset Alliance Church, 708 Stoystown Road, at 7 p.m.

Speaking on the theme "Their Courage, Our Commitment" will be Pamela Tokar-Ickes, the Somerset County commissioners chairwoman; Jerry Spangler, the county district attorney and co-chairman of the Flight 93 task force; and Gordon Felt, president of the Families of Flight 93.

The names of the passengers and crew will be read by victims' families and community residents who assisted after the crash.

Directions can be found at www.somersetalliance.org

Tomorrow morning, a brief service will be held at the temporary memorial on Skyline Road near Shanksville. Participants are encouraged to arrive no later than 9:30 a.m. The ceremony will include the tolling of the Bells of Remembrance, laying of wreaths and reading of the names of the 40 passengers and crew who died in the crash.

Also tomorrow, South Park Township will continue a seven-year tradition of honoring the victims of 9/11. The event, held in conjunction with Windover Hills United Methodist Church, will begin at 7 p.m. at Sunny Slope in Allegheny County's South Park.

The tribute will include recognition of South Park police, Broughton Volunteer Fire Department, Library Volunteer Fire Company and Tri-Community South Emergency Medical Services. Members of the Allegheny County Police and the Sheriff's Department and military personnel also will be honored.

Also tomorrow, the Pleasant Hills Volunteer Fire Company will hold a memorial service open to the public at 7 p.m. at Mowry Park.

Meanwhile in Arlington, Va., tourists will find that a new memorial to the 184 people who died at the Pentagon Sept. 11 is not especially convenient. Nor is it ideal from a security perspective to have 24-hour public access right outside the U.S. military's nerve center.

But there is little dispute that the new memorial, which opens to the public tomorrow evening, was built where it should have been: at the spot where American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon's west wall.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will speak at a ceremony dedicating the memorial tomorow morning.

The memorial, built on an angle parallel to the plane's path just before it crashed, consists primarily of 184 cantilevered benches, each bearing a victim's name. The two-acre park will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and be patrolled by Pentagon police.

Memorials are also planned in New York and Western Pennsylvania where the three other hijacked planes hit Sept. 11, but the Pentagon's is the first completed.