Volunteers, first responders relive emotions
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Shanksville Fire Department member Annie Daniels carries the axe as she marches with the department contingent during Sunday's ceremonies. Sandee Eggleston, a retired United Airlines flight attendant supervisor, cries at the Flight 93 memorial.
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As a rule, the hundreds of Flight 93 first responders and investigators who came from nearby small towns and distant states to collect evidence and remains at the site in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, don't do reunions.
"A reunion implies a happy occasion," Michael Kaner, a forensic dentist from Newtown, Pa., who was part of the federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Responses Team brought to the site in 2001 to help identify remains, said Sunday. "This was a somber occasion."
Still, for many of the several hundred DMORT members, firefighters, Pennsylvania State Police, Salvation Army volunteers and others attending this weekend's dedication of the Flight 93 National Memorial on this 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, some old acquaintances were renewed and memories -- and emotions -- rekindled.
"It was more emotional than anything," said Steve Grieger, a now-retired FBI evidence response team photographer from Cincinnati who was here for 21/2 weeks in 2001, but hadn't been back until Saturday. "I remember again how when we first started working here on Sept. 12, and picking up pieces, we didn't have any faces that went with them. But then the families held a memorial (at the end of that first week) and when you saw faces of the victims, it had an impact."
Memories of those weeks working on the crash site are still too overwhelming for some of his fellow FBI agents in Cincinnati, Mr.Grieger said.
"Some just didn't want to come back," he said.
State police Sgt. Craig Bowman, who came to Saturday's ceremony with his wife, made it to the crash site on Sept. 11, 2001 within a half-hour, and he said his most salient memory is one that every other first responder repeated: "Disbelief. Because we had received word of a plane having crashed and there was nothing recognizable as a plane that we could see."
Many first responders and investigators have come back to the anniversaries over the years, largely on their own, particularly the local firefighters and state troopers.
But this year, with the memorial opening and the 10th anniversary, the National Park Service made a special effort to invite everyone who played a role, from the arborists who recovered evidence from trees, to the FBI agents who combed the ground, to the Salvation Army volunteers who delivered food.
First Published September 12, 2011 12:00 am
