AP News, September 23rd, 2007
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited the Flight 93 crash site before stopping in Pittsburgh on Sunday as part of a fundraising tour for a memorial and museum to commemorate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Several hundred people gathered near the city's baseball stadium, PNC Park, where Bloomberg and other officials spoke and signed one of two 40-foot-long steel beams that will be used in the construction of the World Trade Center memorial in New York.
"With your help, we will build a memorial that will tell the story to future generations so that our children and grandchildren will know the sacrifice that was made and will realize just how important the freedoms that we have in this country are," he said.
Earlier Sunday, Bloomberg toured the Flight 93 memorial site near Shanksville, where he presented officials with an American flag that had flown above ground zero. The flag was then raised at the Flight 93 site, about 65 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
Flight 93 was en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco on Sept. 11, 2001, when it crashed as passengers apparently tried to rush the cockpit of the hijacked airliner. All 33 passengers, seven crew members and the hijackers died.
"I was so pleased to hear that he wanted to come out and see for himself what this place is," said Christine Fraser, sister of flight victim Colleen Fraser.
Last year, Bloomberg became chairman of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which is nearing its $350 million fundraising goal. More than $400 million has also been committed by the government to build the memorial, which will feature two pools that evoke the footprints of the two towers and will list the names of the nearly 3,000 victims.
The fundraising tour, which Bloomberg said had already produced about $1 million in donations, features the steel beams and a traveling exhibition of photographs, artifacts and videos that recount the story of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The tour began in Columbia, S.C., where the beams were made, and has stopped in Raleigh, N.C., and Norfolk, Va. It will head west before swinging through the South this winter.
People lined up to donate money and sign the beams, which were perched on a trailer and weigh 4 tons each.
"I think it's a good thing to remember what happened on September 11th, and just signing that makes you think you have a part of it," said Steve Spinda, a 48-year-old electrician.
