Adam Shaffer knows the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, is approaching when the striking purple blooms of dense blazing stars begin fading from the landscape of the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville.
"They're gone now, so we're out of August," Shaffer said as he walked toward the Memorial Plaza on a recent Friday.
Shaffer has become intimately familiar with both the landscape of the memorial and the stories of the plane's 40 passengers and crew members since he started working as an intern in 2005. He's now the chief of interpretation and education for the memorial.
In the 25 years since United Flight 93 crashed in Somerset County, volunteers and staff such as Shaffer have been carefully preserving and retelling the stories of the people who fought back against the plane's hijackers.
The details of Flight 93 were able to be decoded because the plane's two black box recorders were recovered from the site, giving investigators audio from the cockpit and information on the plane's movements.
And, significantly, passengers were able to call loved ones using Airfones installed on the plane before it crashed.
The details of this story haven't changed since they were first uncovered. But how the story is told to resonate with visitors changes slightly with time.
"The trick is to talk with people that have that lived memory — they know exactly where they were, what they were doing that morning — and then immediately turn around and be engaging to an 8- or a 10-year-old visitor and include them in the story and in a way that they are interested and they understand why the memorial's here and that they really are the future stewards of this story and this place," Shaffer said.
About a third of Americans today were born after the 2001 terrorist attacks. In order to "never forget," Shaffer said there needs to be education.
Along with the nonprofit Friends of Flight 93, the National Park Service has created a program called Teach to Remember, which includes a 10-minute video overview of the events of 9/11 that teachers can show in lessons.
For the 25th anniversary, the park service and the nonprofit worked with the University of Pittsburgh to hold a three-day symposium with 40 educators on how to teach the day's events. Teachers were able to share their experiences in giving lessons on the topic and heard from family members of people on board Flight 93.
"We have 40 new ambassadors for this story and teaching 9/11 that are now out there doing it this school year," Shaffer said.
Such a program didn't exist when Sam Kiser was going through school. He's 22 and holds a fellowship at the memorial named for passenger Richard J. Guadagno, who was a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. The fellowship gives a young person a start in conservation and education.
Growing up, Kiser knew 9/11 was important, but there wasn't a set curriculum for teaching the tragedy in school. He first encountered the attacks in YouTube clips. Teachers didn't start bringing it up until he was in middle school.
Kiser said people his age have more of a cultural understanding of the day, over a strictly fact-based knowledge.
"That's … the flashpoint that we can kind of point to, like, well, things got really bad then," Kiser said. "And there's so many issues pertaining to surveillance and wars and that kind of thing that — right or not — people of my generation point to Sept. 11."
Now Kiser is one of the people sharing the stories of the people of Flight 93, which he called an honor.
During a presentation on the facts of the flight, Kiser highlighted personal details of Waleska Martinez, an automation specialist for the U.S. Census Bureau who loved to dance; First Officer LeRoy Homer, who seemed "born to fly;" Hilda Marcin, a retired bookkeeper and teacher's aide who emigrated from Germany in the 1920s; and Honor Elizabeth Wainio, a retail manager who was just getting back from a long-awaited trip to Europe.
Shaffer encourages all staff and volunteers involved in recounting the story to choose two or three people to learn about in-depth. That way, they can talk about them the same way they might bring up a family member or close friend.
"That's the approach," Shaffer said. "It really is to make them as human and as personable as we possibly can."
Shaffer said it's also important to provide the "connecting points" between the attacks and life today, such as the changes that have happened in technology and security.
"We're still living out the story of 9/11 25 years later," Shaffer said.
Questions from the attacks still linger. Remains of victims who were in the Twin Towers in New York are still being identified. Four men accused of involvement in the attacks just had their trial scheduled for 2028.
Kiser said young visitors often ask about the physics of the crash. Once they start to understand the how, then questions sometimes turn to why.
"I think it's a hard question to ask," Kiser said, "and answer."
Shaffer said some answers will always be out of reach. There are still questions about what exactly happened that day in the cockpit of Flight 93, 25 years ago. But part of working at the memorial is being comfortable with what is unknown.
"I think we can be thankful that they took the actions that they did and we're here at a memorial, at a site in rural southwestern Pennsylvania where no further loss of life on 9/11 occurred as a result of what they did," Shaffer said.
"And I think that's enough."
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