18 years.
It can't really be 18 years, can it?
And for me, the memory is always the same.
That brilliant, crystal-clear blue sky. About as gorgeous a late summer day as you can imagine.
To be forever stained by a plume of smoke, and the worst imaginable reality.
Terror arrived on American soil.
Jets slammed into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, and a field outside Shanksville, in western Pennsylvania.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Flight 93 Memorial.
I almost drove right past it.
We were visiting the area to see the venue picked out by my son his fiancee for their wedding later that year. Green Gables is in Jennerstown, Pa.
We had just gotten off the Pennsylvania Turnpike and were headed for Jennerstown when I saw a small, unassuming sign: Flight 93 Memorial, 2 miles.
There is no billboard. No fanfare, only a small signpost with an arrow.
It matches the mood of that sacred ground.
It's one of the most haunting places I've ever visited.
It also just happened to be one of the coldest days of that winter, but it shared something in common with that Sept. 11 from years ago.
A brilliant blue sky.
As I stood shivering at the spot where you look out over the memorial site, the sky seemed to just swallow us up. It was everywhere. That's when it dawned on me what really happened that day, and that nearly eveyrone in that part of the state likely saw that jet, against that brilliant blue sky, plummeting toward the Earth.
As it turns out, there is a Delco connection that I had not realized with the Flight 93 Memorial site.
Actually, two of them.
Every member of the crew and passenger on Flight 93 is memorialized with a plaque on the wall at the overlook site. The very first plaque I saw was for flight attendant Debbie Welsh Jacobs. She grew up in Marple.
But it was not until a few weeks later when I wrote about it that I learned of another Delco connection. The superintendent of the park is Stephen Clark, a Delco native and son of longtime Daily News reporter Joe Clark.
He will emcee the events at the site today, including introducing Vice President Mike Pence.
18 years.
Never forget.
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