20 years on, victims of Sept 11 attacks remembered

SHANKSVILLE, Pennsylvania－When Dale Nacke talked about the last moments of his late brother Joey before the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept 11, 2001, he said his brother did not make any phone call because he would not share that burden with anybody.

"He wouldn't put that kind of pain on the rest of us, so he didn't make any phone calls. That isn't our brother," Nacke, 49, said on a chilly Friday night after a memorial ceremony at the plane's crash site surrounded by meadows and hills, located in the Pennsylvania countryside outside Shanksville.

Asked how long it took for family members to recover from the tragedy, Dale said 20 years makes little difference. "I don't think we do (recover)," he said, choking back tears. "I'll live the rest of my life without my brother, and that absence in our family never goes away."

Flight 93 was one of the four hijacked planes when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the deadliest terrorist attacks on US soil. The other three planes hit the World Trade Center twin towers in New York, and the Pentagon near Washington.

Experts believe the target of the Flight 93 hijackers was probably the US Capitol Building or the White House. The 40 passengers and crew members attempted to seize control from hijackers, which crashed only 20 minutes flying-time from Washington.

"If I had the opportunity to say anything to him, given what this is, I would love to tell him how much, how proud I was of him," Nacke said of his brother.

The memorial ceremony, held a few hours before US President Joe Biden and some former presidents gathered at the site to mark the 20th anniversary, was attended by hundreds of families and friends of the victims, as well as many others who traveled hours to pay their tribute to the heroes they never met.

Forty candle lanterns were lit and carried by family members and friends, and placed below each victim's name, engraved on tall slabs of white marble, known as the Wall of Names. Flowers, small American flags and a toy bear were easy to spot.

Glenna Putyrski, who lived in a nearby town, said she was a sixth grader when the plane crashed and had no idea what was going on, and attending the ceremony makes things real. "Seeing the family members, I was really choked up too, because it just makes it so much more real seeing a family member of each person. And you just realize all those individual families and their own stories and everybody that was affected."

Asked about one of the big changes the attacks have brought, Putyrski highlighted the loss of trust among people and among countries.

"Just overall distrust in the world, I feel like that just changed everybody's outlook on everything."

Putyrski's mother Anne Putyrski added: "That sense of fear that people have now, maybe they didn't before."

Nacke said: "I'd say that we as a nation are not as arrogant about our own security as we were perhaps 20 years ago, and I think we have a better heightened awareness, and are maybe more vigilant."

The attacks helped galvanize the country and bring society together, but it did not last long, he said.

"Now 20 years later, I see a country that's largely divided."

Xinhua