Four Rutgers graduates were among the 40 who perished
When United Airlines Flight 93 slammed into a Pennsylvania hillside on September 11, 2001, 35 minutes after terrorists took control of the plane, four Rutgers graduates were among the innocent people on board who perished. On September 10 of this year, nearly a decade later, federal officials will dedicate the first phase of the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a tribute to the 40 passengers and crew who fought back and prevented the hijackers from flying into their intended target in Washington, D.C.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day, after three hijacked jetliners struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the fourth crashed in Shanksville. Rutgers lost a total of 37 alumni.
Three national monuments were created to honor the dead, but only two have been fully funded. The foundations that built the memorials in New York and Arlington, Virginia, met their fundraising goals by 2008, but the Pennsylvania memorial is still $10 million short. Although $52 million has been raised from private, state and federal sources, fundraisers for the Flight 93 National Memorial Campaign at the National Park Foundation say the memorial cannot be completed as designed without an additional $10 million from private donors.
Catherine Price, whose mother, Jean Peterson, 55, and stepfather, Don Peterson GSM’67, 66, were on Flight 93, believes the site’s rural location – far from corporate donors—and the fact that the plane crashed on private land complicated the task. The park service did not complete acquisition of its 2,200 acres in southwestern Pennsylvania until 2009. But Price said she was overwhelmed by the response she got when she organized a charity run for the cause. Last Memorial Day she raised $14,802 in the Spring Lake Five Mile Run, six times her goal.
“We were blown away by the amount of people who wanted to support our team,” said Price, 30, a social worker in Hoboken.
The Petersons, who lived in Spring Lake and often distributed water to runners during the annual run, were retired and traveling to Yosemite National Park on September 11, 2001. They boarded Flight 93, bound for San Francisco, in Newark. The other alumni on the doomed plane were Patrick Joseph Driscoll GSNB’75, 70, of Manalapan, a retired communications executive also heading for Yosemite; Colleen Fraser LC’74, 51, of Elizabeth, an advocate for the disabled on her way to a grant-writing seminar; and Richard Guadagno CC’84, 38, formerly of Ewing, manager of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge in northern California. He was flying home from a 100th birthday party for his grandmother in Trenton.
Many of their relatives plan to travel to Shanksville to reflect and reminisce on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, including Price and Lori Guadagno, Richard’s only sibling.
For Lori, a 1982 Rutgers graduate, the days leading up to September 11 every year are full of anxiety and dread. As her memories of 9/11 revive and flood back, “It does feel like a countdown,” said Guadagno, who directs an arts program for seriously ill children in Jacksonville, Florida. Her parents, both 86, have relocated nearby. “Normally my family does a little ritual at the beach. After the day is over, I feel I can breathe again.”
This year those feelings will likely be even more intense. In August two FBI agents came to her house with three canisters of film – Rich had served as the family photographer at his grandmother’s party –and an antique barometer he bought earlier that day. Investigators had recovered the items long before, but did not query surviving relatives until this summer. By then they had also developed the film. The agents handed Lori the photos. Some were marred by the crash impact, but others were clear, showing relatives enjoying a joyous occasion. “It was a bittersweet gift, ghostly in many ways, but a beautiful thing to have.”
For years after 9/11 Guadagno was haunted by the horror of Flight 93’s final minutes. No more. She is certain he was one of the passengers who stormed the cockpit at 9:57 a.m, six minutes before impact. “I knew my brother, and the law enforcement training he had. On the outside, he was a pretty mellow guy, but he had such a will and a drive. I know he was completely focused on what he was going to do,” she said. “The beauty of Flight 93 was that they were 40 people who came together, in one united front, to do something incredible.”
A pair of white marble walls frame a ceremonial gateway, which provides a solemn entrance along the flight path into the crash site or "Sacred Ground," where only the relatives of themen and women aboard Flight 93 will be allowed to enter. Each slab will be engraved with the name of one of the 40 people who lost their lives in a fight with terrorists for control of their plane on September 11, 2001. The walls and walkway are part of a Memorial Plaza that overlooks the Sacred Ground that is the plane's crash site and final resting place of the passengers and crew.