Federal officials have treated with great dignity the site where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on 9/​11 as passengers and crew thwarted an attempt to hijack their airplane.

That reverence continued last month with the quiet burial of four shipping containers holding wreckage of the plane. The wreckage, which had been stored in a warehouse in an undisclosed location, was buried on a part of the crash site that is off limits to virtually everyone except the family members of the 40 passengers and crew members who died that day. Three caskets of unidentified remains were buried on the property previously.

While relatives of the lost have the closest connection to the site, it belongs to all Americans. The smoldering debris field cut from field and forest 17 years ago today is the Flight 93 National Memorial.  

There is a visitors center, 40 memorial groves and a path along a sloping black wall that leads to marble slabs bearing the 40 victims’ names. While the National Park Service always will work to maintain and improve the memorial, the return of the plane’s debris to the crash site is a defining moment that should not go unnoticed.

First Published: July 11, 2018, 4:00 a.m.