Volunteers at Flight 93 Memorial begin revitalizing trees

SOMERSET COUNTY, Pa. (WTAJ) — The Flight 93 National Memorial is a tribute to the 40 brave passengers and crew members who sacrificed their lives to stop the hijackers who took over their plane on 9/11.

There are many things to see when you visit the Flight 93 Memorial. There’s the Wall of Names, Tower of Voices, and Memorial Plaza. However, you can’t forget about the trees.

The Friends of Flight 93 are now working with the National Park Service, and scientists to revitalize the trees within the 40 Memorial Groves.

“I think people know that the memorial groves are a feature here. That’s why it’s so important that those groves are thriving because they come here, they hear about this wonderful tribute that we have with 40 groves and 40 trees. And then they come here and they see trees that are dying and trees that aren’t thriving. So we want to change that so the visitor experience is more happy and that they see thriving trees instead of dying trees,” Donna Gibson, Executive Director of Friends of Flight 93 said.

There are over 2,000 trees at the Memorial. That includes the alle trees and the memorial groves. There’s a grove of trees for each passenger and crew member with 40 trees inside of each grove.

In recent years, the organization realized that something was wrong. Some of the trees seemed to be declining. So they asked experts to run tests.

“Through about five years of tests, they’ve realized that there’s not as many micro-organisms in the soil. There’s a lot of salt in the soil. Going through those processes, they realize that we have to do something or they’re all going to die,” Katherine Hostetler, Public Information Officer for Flight 93 National Memorial said.

The solution is a 10-year plan to revitalize the soil and trees. The project will be done in eight phases. Volunteers are pruning trees, spreading mulch and removing dead trees to start soil revitalization.

“We want to make sure we get it right. And we’re doing phases. If a phase isn’t exactly the way we want it, we have the opportunity to stop, reevaluate and readjust our plan,” Gibson said.

The Friends of Flight 93 will be announcing a campaign called the ‘Resiliency Project’ because they want the groves to be resilient, so they can thrive for generations to come. Once the campaign is launched, people can buy a tree, buy a grove, or make a donation that will help with the soil remediation and irrigation.

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In Spring 2025, the Memorial will start to plant new trees. Gibson said it will be a volunteer event that will be open to the public to give people the chance to be part of the revitalization process.

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