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Wednesday, September 11, 2002

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. -- Before their varsity volleyball match last night, these high school girls and District 5 rivals acted the same way as 357 days ago. The fell into a jumbled line facing the American flag: Shanksville-Stonycreek girl, Rockwood girl, Shanksville-Stonycreek girl, Rockwood girl. They sang the national anthem. They held hands.

No coach demanded they do this. No adult suggested it.

Just happened. The same way it did Sept. 17, when the girls from Shanksville-Stonycreek returned to play games for the first time nearly a week to the day that changed their community forever. They shrug. They say it felt like the right thing to do.

Teen-age emotions can be such a tangle under the most ordinary of circumstances. These are far from ordinary. A year ago today, this Class A school of 500 children, along with this quiet village of 245 folks, became a touchstone for national emotion and attention. The reclaimed strip mine off Skyline Drive where Flight 93 came to earth, much like the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, transformed into a grail for many. Those who make the pilgrimage deep inside Somerset County stop first at the crash site, then at the kindergarten-through-12th grade school on the hilltop a mile away.

Yesterday morning, about the same time of the day when the last of the 9/11 crashes slammed shut doors and jostled lives inside the school, a group of bikers pulled into the Shanksville-Stonycreek parking lot. A hundred folks, steering their Harley-Davidsons from San Diego to the Pentagon, stopped by for an impromptu ceremony. The kids piled out of classrooms and huddled around the gardens, the benches and the statue of hands dedicated in May on the school's west side -- from where students saw the black cloud of smoke a year ago today. In those same skies yesterday afternoon soared a military infrared-sensor plane accompanied by fighter jets.

"I don't think anybody wants to forget it," said Kim Shaffer, the senior class president and a Lady Vikings volleyball player. "Sometimes, people go, 'Oh, no, another assembly.' But each one is unique."

Today brings the eyes of the nation, brings an estimated 40,000 visitors, brings the President and First Lady, brings back more memories. Some around the school and the community were bothered that the children weren't specifically invited to the services at the crash site. Others want no part of it. "I'm leaving Shanksville," said senior volleyball player Melissa Sturtz. "I was telling people it was like a whole village moved in here overnight."

Two members of the Lady Vikings tennis team will be at the site early, invited guests for a morning-news live shot on the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

"Are things back to normal? I'm not sure what normal is here anymore," said Athletic Director Jeff Kimmel. "Normal as it used to be before was people not knowing we were even here."

These kids have signed banners, planned and worked on the sculpture and gardens donated by a Texas company, made thank-you cards to respond to the outpouring from around the country, solicited donations that ranged anywhere from a food drive to a gum drive (for parched site workers). Certainly, they were spared the horror of losing a parent or a relative or a family friend in that fateful day a year ago. Rather, they lost a measure of innocence.

Every day, Shaffer drives down Buckstown Road to school, passing on the left a memorial to some students killed in a car crash years ago, passing on the right the Flight 93 crash site. "Every day," she said, "I think about it." It is such a part of routine life, the school calendar has crash-theme pictures: the fourth-grade around the town banner, students working on the memorial garden, and so on.

"I'm not tired of it, but there's been a lot of talk," freshman Allison Zimmerman said. "All the assemblies. The reporters. The meetings. June and July, you didn't hear too much about it ..."

"... then the miners got stuck," added classmate and teammate Becky Nicholson, referring to the Quecreek incident barely 10 miles away. "Did you hear about that? Nine miners, three days. Nine-three, like Flight 93. That is so ..."

Maybe it was serendipitous that, during their jumbled lineup for the national anthem, Rockwood's No. 20 stood between Shanksville-Stonycreek's Nos. 9 and 11.

In the gym before 71 family members and friends, the home Lady Vikings rallied from one set down and an 8-2 deficit in the second set to win, 15-11 and 15-2. It was their first victory in four matches this season.

Shrug. Just happened. And it felt right.