Though most remember the events that took place on Sept. 11, 2001, not many can say that Flight 93, the plane that citizens overtook before it reached the White House, landed not only in their hometown, but nearly in their mother’s backyard.
But Terrisa Ziek, ESU clinical instructor, can.
“The first thing I did was I went and filled the car up with gas,” Terrisa Ziek said. “I don’t know why, but that was the first thing I did.”
Dawn McConkie, woodwinds professor, also had friends and colleagues in New York City during the events of Sept. 11.
“I think everybody was pretty much distracted for the rest of the day,” McConkie said.
Both Terrisa Ziek and her husband Gary Ziek, music professor, are from Pennsylvania. When they heard that Flight 93 was missing over western Pennsylvania, they said they were both scared.
“The original report said the plane had gone down in Greensboro, Pennsylvania which is right where we lived, very close to. And then they kept on changing the location and then one of the news reports came out and said the plane had gone down in Somerset County, Pennsylvania which is my wife’s hometown,” Gary Ziek said.
The plane crashed nine miles away from Stoystown: a small community about 60 miles away from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and 173 miles away from its target—the White House.
“I tried calling my father, couldn’t get through to him. I tried his work. I tried calling my grandma and all the lines at that point… everything was busy. And that’s when I really started to panic,” Terrisa Ziek said.
Terrisa Ziek’s father, Terry Kelley, was a city worker in Somerset County, Pennsylvania and when the emergency personnel heard about the accident, they all went to see what they could do to help. When they arrived and saw the damage, they realized there was nothing.
Judy Weiss, Terrisa Ziek’s mother, was in New Jersey at the time. When she heard about the plane in Pennsylvania she immediately returned only to find she was not allowed on to her property. All of the roads were blocked off. They couldn’t get to and from without showing ID. The plane crashed less than three miles away from Judy Weiss’s house.
“It had a horrific impact on [my mom], even though they weren’t there at the time. It changed her, she’s not the same,” Terrisa Ziek said.
Though the building of the 9/11 memorial in New York began in 2006, Terrisa Ziek thinks the worst part for the people of Stoystown, Pennsylvania, was not having a monument in their town to honor those that died until 2011.
“They lost their lives, but they saved how many more?…We all lost in that sense of being Americans,” Terrisa Ziek said.
