An Eyewitness Account of the Crash of Flight 93

This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories. And today, all show long, we're commemorating the anniversary of September 11th, 2001. Many of us have strong memories of that day in New York. But today we're going to hear the story of Flight 93, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers tried to overpower the hijackers. First, you're going to hear from Linda Shepley. Linda is a native of Somerset County, Pennsylvania and saw the tragic crash of Flight 93. Here's Linda with her story and the events of that day, September 11, 2001.

Today program when we saw the first plane actually hit the World Trade Center. And I was in the process of doing my laundry and hanging them on the line. And I had gone outside and hung out some clothes and I come back in for another load. And we saw on the bottom of the screen the Pentagon and I thought, Well, what's going on here and then they had grounded all the planes and all the flights and I had gone out then to hang up the last flight and our load of clothes. It was such a beautiful day.

I can remember that always. When I went out it was about 10 o'clock. I was hanging the clothes on the line. I heard this noise it sounded like a truck going over a bridge and I looked over my left shoulder looked up and I saw this plane and its wings wobbled in the sky and I thought they landed all the planes and this plane is out there why didn't it land you know and I thought well maybe it's trying to find an airport and why it wobbled I thought well it was having some kind of a mechanical problem and as I saw it coming over I could see the engines on the wings this was a big plane. We live near the Freedons Airport there's small planes going over all the time and it was slowly descending down as it was going out towards the horizon and then all of a sudden it dipped its right wing and started to turn and I thought well Freedons Airport is too small to take that size of the plane I don't know what it's doing and just as soon as the wing dipped down it took a nosedive into the ground. It took me a minute to comprehend what what I had seen. When the plane hit the fireball came up over the trees and I was screaming for my husband Jim to call 9-1-1. He came running out on our side deck and I said a big plane crashed and he said a small plane I said no no no no it was a big one it was a big one I saw the engines you know on the wings and he tried to dial 9-1-1 but the line was busy so he kept trying I said keep calling because if our whistles were blowing and I don't know if they knew where to go and finally he got through I said to him I said where do you think it landed and he said maybe Lambertsville but my son Michael works up there at Rolock right where the plane went down and he said you better call your sister she lives in Lambertsville and see if she saw where the plane went down so I talked to my sister and she said she doesn't know what happened but she said her windows and her doors rattled in the house from the pressure it felt like the inside of the house was pulled outside and she says I don't know how to tell you this but she said there was a big explosion where Michael works she only lives over the hill from Rolock and the only thing I could think of was there's a big explosion and it can cover a wide area so we jumped in the car immediately I still had my laundry in my hands and we drove out to Rolock we were there before the fire trucks it was hard to tell where the plane went down because there was no smoke no fire it was everything was you know gone and we pulled in to where Rolock is and at the Y there stood my son trucked in traffic I was so happy to see him after a big hug we talked him for a minute and he had said it it went down just a few yards down from where he was and he said there wasn't anything left of it so we went back to my sisters and I made a phone call to my other son to make sure that he knew that his brother was okay while we were there the fire trucks were coming I mean there were a lot of fire trucks and they wanted to turn in the road below and my husband ran down there quick and told him to go straight and turn at Rolock and he was down there for a little while and we went back home after he helped a lot of the fire trucks and we turned on channel 2 on the TV and they said that that was the plane that was missing and that it had terrorists on it I mean it's that's hard to believe that something like that could happen and they said that they had put up a battle to try to take over the plane that somebody could fly it and land it that was a passenger and anybody that tries to fight and know that they may lose their life they are heroes and that's what they did after that episode I just watched those planes and it was a long time before they left any planes fly again and the sky didn't have any planes in it from that day on any time I was outside hanging laundry in a line or or just sitting out on the porch I just look up and watch em planes just watch and make sure they didn't come down I was afraid there was going to be another took me a long time not to watch the planes all the time but I can still remember it like it was yesterday and I went to Shanksville to the church and they had a memorial there everybody in town I think was there it was it was a huge crowd it was sad to see the families of what they went through but you know they can be proud of them and we all came and we are I was saying to myself later on it as I was standing there in my yard looking up at that plane if any of those poor people saw me standing down there there's nothing I could do and that was hard but they fought they were fighting when they were above them and that's what counts they're true heroes and indeed they were and great work by Madison on this piece and a special thanks to the flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville if you're ever in the Pittsburgh area stop by honor the memory of those that did what they did on that flight remarkably heroic acts by the passengers on that plane Linda Shepley's 9-11 story here on our American stories folks if you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past know that all of our stories about American history from war to innovation culture and faith are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College a place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that are good in life and if you can't get to Hillsdale Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses go to Hillsdale edu to learn more