Tom’s alarm rang at 6:00am on May 26, 2021 and the first thing I heard was a threat of storms could impact our day. While a gas shortage threatened the earlier portion of our trip, weather had never been an issue – except for our time at the Natural Bridge in Virginia where we experienced nonstop drizzle. But on that Wednesday morning, the forecast wasn’t favorable for the western part of Pennsylvania, which caused a sense of urgency for my companions.
Our hotel in Somerset was roughly ten miles from the Flight 93 Memorial, which made it easy for my companions and I to arrive just as the gates opened at 9:00am. Tom and Bob decided to bypass the Visitor Center to visit the actual memorial first, which would give the three of us time to salute the 40 heroes of Flight 93 before anyone else arrived. Their plan worked to perfection. From the parking lot, it was a quarter-mile hike along a pathway that took us along the northern border of the debris field. A sloping, stark black wall served as a border for the final resting place of the 40 passengers and crew members who perished in that field on September 11, 2001. Off in the distance, I saw the huge sandstone boulder that marked the site where Flight 93 impacted the Earth. As Tom carried me along the angled wall, the silence was deafening; only the chirps of an occasional bird or a gust of breeze broke the serenity. At the end of our journey, the blackness gave way to a polished white-marble wall that consisted of 40 unique panels; each engraved with the name of a passenger or crew member from United Airlines Flight 93. The Wall of Names was erected on the final flight path of the doomed airliner just before it impacted the ground at 10:03am on September 11th. Located at the southern end of the ‘Wall of Names’ was a rugged wooden gate fashioned from hemlock, which were the trees that grew near the impact site. That ‘Ceremonial Gate’, which is used only by Flight 93 family members to access the crash site, was designed to represent the strength and resolve of the passengers and crew who resisted and fought the hijackers during the final moments of the flight.
Mongo made the decision to walk along a winding pathway from the memorial up to the Visitor Center while Tom and I took the Rogue up to the Center’s adjacent parking lot. Before we entered the museum, my photographer carried me along the flight path where we were stopped at a glass wall etched with the words: “A common field one day. A field of honor forever.” It was at that same wall, which overlooked the Flight 93 Memorial, where President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stood on September 11, 2020 and gazed in reflective silence at the sacred memorial in the distance.
Inside the museum, we found some artifacts on display that brought to life the finality of that fateful day. I saw small pieces of the United Airlines passenger jet that were recovered from the debris field as well as personal artifacts from some of the passengers and crew. Perhaps the most touching display was the wall that featured photographs of all 40 passengers and crew members. For the most part, they were all strangers until fate joined them side by side for a brief moment on their final flight together into eternity. Along with the photos were a couple of personal pieces including a book that Todd Beamer had been reading before he left for the flight and the favorite hat usually worn by flight attendant Deborah Welsh.
The four guys pictured above could’ve stayed in their seats onboard Flight 93 and let the situation play out like it had at the World Trade Center and Pentagon earlier that morning on September 11, 2001. But when they learned of the three passenger planes that had already been intentionally crashed into those buildings, they got together and formed a plan. Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett, and Jeremy Glick, four strangers whose lives had intersected for just a short time, stormed the cockpit with the intent of subduing the terrorists. The heroic quartet were resolute in their efforts and spent their final moments of life defeating pure evil. When the struggle turned ugly inside the cockpit, the plane slammed into the ground outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania at a speed of 563 mph. Although all 40 passengers and crew members were killed instantly upon impact, the four heroes had succeeded – Flight 93’s radical terrorists were unable to complete their mission of destroying the Capitol Building. Surprisingly, our historic Capitol was less than 20 minutes flight-time from where the plane went down.
It’s no secret that I despise Presidential assassins – like the four psychopaths who killed Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. But after my visit to the Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania, I realized I deplore the terrorists of 9/11 even more because they assassinated nearly 3,000 innocent civilians. I only hope the citizens of our nation learned a huge lesson on that fateful day. Going forward, and quite frankly forever more, we can never let down our guard again. I’ve personally gone through so many security checkpoints and scans that my stainless-steel skeleton glows; and that extra time doesn’t bother me one bit. But even though nearly 20 years have passed, I stay awake at night wondering if our nation has grown complacent and we simply “go through the motions” with most of our security. I love history; but that’s one type of history I hope is never repeated.
When the three of us returned to our vehicle, I had believed in my mind that our Flight 93 visit and tribute had finished; but I was wrong. Tom and Bob had set their sights on finding the same area where a famous photograph was captured minutes after the United Airlines passenger plane had crashed on 9/11. My photographer had a copy of Val McClatchey’s famous photo on hand and Tom figured her image would help him line-up the countryside from 2001 with the current landscape. That plan was all contingent, however, on whether or not my companions could locate where McClatchey had taken her photo, which was from the front yard of her home.
Before we left on the trip, Tom had found on-line information that stated McClatchey’s house was located on Buckstown Road and was roughly a mile east of the crash site. But after a complete search of a long stretch of that road, my companions were left empty-handed – none of the buildings in the historic photo were anywhere to be found. Then out of nowhere, Bob suggested we turn onto Dakota Lane from Buckstown Road; which turned out to be a brilliant idea. Less than a minute later, McClatchey’s image came to life before our eyes. From our position along Dakota Lane, I could easily see the nearby red barn and outbuilding that were in the photo; as well as a distant house and another barn that had been transformed from white to red over the years. But when I envisioned dark gray smoke rising up from behind the distant tree line, sadness filled my entire body. All I could do was think about the brave heroes of Flight 93. In my mind, I caught a brief glimpse of Beamer, Bingham, Burnett, and Glick above the trees as they smiled and said “Are you ready? Let’s roll!”
It was a few minutes after 11 o’clock and we were ready to roll; roll on down the highway towards Pittsburgh, that is. But as we headed away from the area where I had envisioned a dark gray cloud over the distant tree line, a more ominous black cloud grew larger by the minute in the Rogue’s windshield. Then it hit – somewhere on I-76 near Monroeville, Pennsylvania, Tom had driven into the storm the meteorologists had predicted for the western part of the Keystone State. The weather became violent as the strong wind rocked the Rogue; the rain fell from the sky in sheets so thick that my photographer drove 30 mph on the Turnpike. As a matter of fact, our four-way emergency flashers helped light the way. But as soon as Tom slowed our vehicle down to merge onto I-376, the rain had slowed as well. Mother Nature’s impressive storm stopped as quickly as it started; and luckily for us, it had stopped within five miles of our destination – the Betty Rosenberg Parkway Jewish Center Cemetery located in Wilkins Township, Pennsylvania.
Earlier in the trip, when Mongo found out that our route home was scheduled to take us near Pittsburgh, he asked my photographer to pencil-in an impromptu stop near the Steel City where Kent State University massacre victim Allison Krause was buried. Not only was Tom “all-in” with the visit, but I was excited as well. Nearly one year earlier, the three of us had stopped at Kent State University where I had a first-hand look at the site where Ohio National Guardsmen had opened fire on student protestors on May 4, 1970. Four students, including Krause, were killed and nine others were injured when the soldiers fired 67 shots in a span of 13 seconds into the crowd. American student Allison Krause was fatally shot in the left side of her chest from a distance of roughly 330 feet by an American soldier; all because she chose to peacefully protest President Richard Nixon’s decision to expand our forces in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Ironically, the night before she was murdered, Allison had talked to a guardsmen on campus and saw he had a lilac on the barrel of his rifle. When the soldier’s commanding officer verbally reprimanded him because of the flower, Krause shouted to the officer: “Flowers are better than bullets.” About 15 hours later, at 12:24pm on May 4, 1970, Allison Krause was shot dead by those same bullets in the parking lot of Kent State’s Prentice Hall.
The three of us walked through the entrance gate to the small Jewish cemetery where we had no trouble finding the gravestone that marked the final resting place of Allison Krause. It was heartbreaking for me to think about Allison’s senseless death 51 years earlier, but the moment became even more melancholy when I saw the words “Flowers are better than bullets – May 3, 1970” etched onto her tombstone. Allison Krause was a beautiful 19-year-old college student who stood for and demonstrated for peace – and there was nothing wrong with that. American soldiers were ordered onto an American college campus by an American President who wanted to prohibit them from exercising their rights under the American Constitution. Allison Krause, along with Jeffery Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder paid the ultimate price for Nixon’s decision – a decision that was far worse and more disgusting than Watergate; at least in my eyes.
When we left the small cemetery in a small township in western Pennsylvania where we visited the small gravesite of a gunshot victim, we embarked on a 120-mile trek to the large gravesite of another gunshot victim – President William McKinley. My companions had no time to waste as the McKinley Presidential Museum, as well as the President’s tomb, was scheduled to close at 4:00pm. Although the sky had grown overcast when we entered the state of Ohio, we had managed to dodge the raindrops – until we reached the parking lot of the William McKinley National Memorial. At the moment Tom shut off the Rogue’s engine, the sky opened up and the deluge of rain ensued. When my photographer carried me into the museum, which was located in the shadow of the McKinley Memorial, we had less than 45 minutes to see the McKinley artifacts, as well as the interior of the tomb, before both closed for the day.
While the museum featured other exhibits related to science, fossils, and other local history displays, it was the William McKinley room that my photographer was obviously focused on. I was impressed by the collection of artifacts on display that were associated with our 25th President. But the best part for me was when I got to stand on three pieces of furniture that were once used by McKinley – including his couch; a letter press that McKinley used in his law office; and a rocking chair the President sat in on the porch of his Canton home. At one point, I had to laugh to myself when lifelike figurines of William and Ida McKinley came to life and startled me. Even though the Presidential couple were animatronic, it felt as though William and Ida were actually standing in the room where they talked about their life in the White House. We had spent 30 minutes inside the museum and that half-hour went by in a blink of an eye. I know I felt rushed; and I figured my cameraman felt the same way as he hustled around the room to capture his images.
At precisely 3:48pm, my photographer had only 12 minutes to leave the museum, climb the 108 granite steps of the nearby William McKinley Memorial, and photograph me near the sarcophagi of the President and First Lady. Luckily for Tom the heavy rain had diminished to a light sprinkle as he ascended the stairs one by one – I stayed completely dry inside the camera case. I laughed to myself because the closer my photographer got to the tomb, the more out of breath he became. In my mind, I thought “Well, if he’s gotta go, there’s no better place than a Presidential tomb!” It seemed great to be back inside McKinley’s tomb. The last time I was inside the tomb was during my first Presidential trip in 2013; the interior was closed due to COVID when I visited in 2020. As I stood beneath the double green granite sarcophagi, I couldn’t help but think about William McKinley being shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York on September 6, 1901 by a useless scumbag. The President died eight days later from the single gunshot wound to his abdomen. When I looked up at McKinley’s sarcophagus, and envisioned him in 1901 at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, I said to myself: “Flowers are better than bullets”; but that’s not always the case in the minds of crazed lunatics. When McKinley’s body was returned to his hometown of Canton, it was placed inside the Werts Receiving Vault in West Lawn Cemetery that’s located next to the present-day McKinley Memorial. On October 10, 1907, a little over six years after his assassination, the bodies of President William McKinley and his wife Ida (she died on May 26, 1907) were transported from the Werts Receiving Vault and reinterred in the William McKinley National Memorial.
Although Tom was able to capture his photos inside McKinley’s tomb, I had wanted to stay there a while longer, but that didn’t happen. We had to leave because it was after four o’clock and that’s when the doors were scheduled to be locked tight for the day. I had to give my companions credit – when the woman arrived to lock the doors, she told them to take their time and get all of their pictures. Because both guys felt guilty about keeping the friendly lady from going home, Tom packed me into the camera case and the three of us headed back down the 108 steps to the vehicle.
We were finished at William McKinley’s tomb – or at least that’s what I was led to believe. When Tom navigated the Rogue out of the William McKinley National Memorial property, we turned right and headed back into West Lawn Cemetery to a second tomb associated with our 25th President. While it took my friends a long time to find the temporary tomb during our visit in June of 2020, my photographer drove directly to the Werts Receiving Vault this time. But when we arrived, all three of us gasped in disbelief – a large group of landscaping contractors were working all around the large tomb. I could tell that Tom was mad, but he was calmed a bit when Mongo said: “We’ll just wait until they’re finished and out of the way. It looks like they’re putting the finishing touches on the lawn right now.” Once again Bob was right – we were delayed about ten minutes before the entire landscaping crew packed up their gear and left the area. In my mind, I figured city officials knew I was coming to the cemetery for photos and they wanted the area spruced-up a bit for me.
It saddened me more to visit the Werts Receiving Vault than when I was inside the large memorial. Following the President’s death on September 14, 1901, he was temporarily laid to rest in that receiving vault until money for the permanent memorial was raised and then the tomb was built, which was nearly six years later. Ida McKinley came to West Lawn Cemetery nearly every day to mourn her beloved husband who was struck down at the age of 58. As I posed for a few images near the vault, it was as though I could hear the First Lady as she openly sobbed. Ida McKinley was a fragile woman who suffered from many illnesses throughout her life – including epilepsy. But when her husband was assassinated in 1901, she had lost her will to live. In a sense, Leon Czolgosz shot her as well. On May 26, 1907 Ida McKinley passed away at the age of 59; likely from a broken heart. She joined her husband inside Werts Receiving Vault where they stayed together for four months until both were reinterred inside the newly constructed permanent memorial.
Tom put me back in the camera case and set me on the backseat of the Rogue. I thought our time in Canton, Ohio had come to an end – but once again I was mistaken. There was one site left on my photographer’s list, and it was a place that I had never visited before – the Stark Library where President William McKinley’s home once stood. The library was located less than two miles from West Lawn Cemetery, and we arrived before I could get settled comfortably inside the camera case. Once there, my photographer carried me to an area on the north side of the library where I posed alongside a historical marker that stood near the location of McKinley’s Canton home.
William and his wife leased the house from Ida’s father shortly after the couple were married in 1871 and they lived there for roughly two years. They also moved back when McKinley was running for President; as a matter of fact, he conducted his famous “front porch campaign” from that home in 1896. During their time in the White House, William and Ida purchased the house with the intent of living there in retirement after McKinley’s Presidency – but that didn’t work out as planned due to the assassination. Before he was killed, however, the President did stay in the house for three months in 1900 and two months in 1901 – likely using it as his Summer White House to escape the scorching heat in Washington. Following her husband’s death, Ida McKinley returned to the home and lived there until her own demise in 1907. A year later, the house was transformed into a hospital and by the 1930s, the building was demolished as the Great Depression swept the nation. As I stood in front of the Stark Library and watched numerous “book worms” emerge from inside, I couldn’t help but think of Presidential candidate William McKinley as he addressed the throngs of people who had come to Canton to hear him speak. It’s been recorded that over 750,000 people came to that house in 1896 to listen to the words and wisdom of William McKinley.
It was 5:00pm and time to depart Canton for the 100-mile journey westward that took us halfway across the state of Ohio. When Tom created our agenda in April, he scheduled the three of us to spend the night in Marion where we would visit the Warren G. Harding sites first thing in the morning. During the two-hour drive to Marion, Bob reserved a room at the Country Inn & Suites; which was located less than three miles from the Presidential homestead.
When we arrived at our hotel just after seven o’clock, I thought I was finished posing for photos – but once again, I was wrong. After Tom and Bob had lugged all of their stuff to the room, the three of us headed for Steve’s Dakota Grill that was located on the opposite side of the highway from our hotel. During dinner, it didn’t take long for me to become disgusted as I watched my camera guy tear into his steak. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought he was eating for the first time all day. It’s a fact, however, that he and Mongo graze on snacks, finger foods and goodies throughout the day; then they usually eat a good meal before nightfall. That strategy was implemented by my companions long ago to maximize their historical sightseeing “window of opportunity” and not waste valuable “tour time” filling their faces inside a restaurant.
After dinner, Tom and Bob wanted to head straight to the Harding home where they could capture photos without others at the site. But when we arrived at the historic house, the late afternoon sun angle made it difficult to capture quality images. They walked around the grounds and up onto the porch, but I wasn’t required to pose for any photos whatsoever. I had to admit, it was relaxing when the three of us sat on Warren G. Harding’s porch and soaked in the ambiance of our 29th President’s homestead; especially knowing that Harding had delivered a lot of campaign speeches from that same porch in 1920.
As the final rays of sunlight gave way to twilight, we returned to our vehicle and headed for the Harding Tomb that was located a little over a mile away. It’s no secret that I love visiting Presidential gravesites, and I’ve been to all 39 of them. I had to admit, however, that nothing compares to seeing Harding’s tomb at night – although Andrew Johnson’s tombstone came close. That was my third visit to the Harding Tomb and the second time I’ve seen it illuminated at night. And each time, I was mesmerized by the magnificent beauty of the white Georgia marble columns set against the black sky. I found it interesting that Harding’s final resting place was the last of the elaborate Presidential tombs; a trend that started with Lincoln’s Springfield tomb in the late 1860s. ‘Silent Cal’ Coolidge ended that 60-year tradition, however, when he went with a more simpler design for his grave marker. In my feeble, resin-filled mind, I’m not sure simpler is always better. After all, my Top-Five Presidential gravesites are as follows: James A. Garfield, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy, Warren G. Harding, and Andrew Johnson.
Our night-time visit to the Harding Tomb ended around 9:45pm. After we returned to the Country Inn & Suites, Tom set me in my usual place near the television set. Before my photographer turned out the lights, however, I heard him as he talked to Mongo about our morning tour of Warren G. Harding’s home. Tom told his friend that he had reached out to the site manager of the home and Presidential Museum and sought permission to photograph me on the spot where Warren Harding had married Florence Kling DeWolfe on July 8, 1891. He asked for consent since interior photography at the house was prohibited and Tom didn’t feel he wanted to disobey the rules. My photographer knew the small ceremony took place near the staircase in the home’s large front hallway and he asked for the manager’s blessing to take one image of me at that location. Sherry Hall, site manager, blatantly turned down his request via email and there was no sugar-coating my cameraman’s displeasure with her decision.
When the lights in the room were extinguished and I stood sentinel while my companions slept, I thought about the issue that had angered my photographer. And quite frankly, I couldn’t blame him for being upset. After all, several years earlier he had encountered two other Presidential homes that had the same rules about photography. One was John Adams’ home ‘Peacefield’ in Quincy, Massachusetts and the other was Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘Sagamore Hill’ in Oyster Bay, New York. On both occasions, Tom was granted special permission by the site managers to be escorted into the homes, away from other visitors, and he was allowed to take a couple of images of me posing in pre-specified areas of the house. In Tom’s thought process, since both Peacefield and Sagamore Hill contained as many, if not more, authentic artifacts; and since each site manager at those two homes had made an exception to their rule for him; then why was Hall so steadfast against his request? Not only did I agree with my photographer for being miffed; I was also anxious to see how he would handle the situation in the morning. While I planned on hanging out with Warren and Ida Harding at their home; it was Tonya who was likely to show up – and I didn’t need another broken knee.
