SHANKSVILLE, PA. Panel gathers ideas for memorial

The design committee hopes to open the competition in late spring.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Designing and building a memorial to honor those who died on Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, will take several years and is being done slowly so ideas can be included from all over the world, planners said Thursday.
A throng of volunteers -- some family members of the victims -- were in the western Pennsylvania town of Somerset on Friday to hear updates on the process, which includes several committees that are soliciting ideas, figuring out how to implement them and overseeing the acquisition of land around the site.
Members of the Flight 93 Memorial Task Force were to announce what theme has emerged from the more than 400 public comments submitted during a period that ended in January. The comments will be used to define criteria for a memorial design competition.
"This has from Day 1 been something that people are drawn to and there's a public interest in what's happening there," said Jerry Spangler, co-chairman of the memorial ideas planning committee.
Ken Nacke, whose brother Louis Joseph Nacke II, 42, died in the plane crash, said the best thing the volunteers can do is take the time to make the right decisions. He would also like to see the rural field largely left intact.
"I think the land speaks for itself," he said.
Background
Flight 93 was the only one of four hijacked planes that did not take a life on the ground Sept. 11. It was en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco when it made a sudden turn near Cleveland, eventually crashing into a field near Shanksville, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. All 40 passengers and crew members aboard were killed.
Families of passengers aboard the flight say they believe their loved ones fought their way into the cockpit and grappled for control of the plane before it went down. The FBI has suggested that terrorists may have deliberately crashed the plane because of the revolt.
The task force must submit a memorial design to the Department of the Interior in September 2005, and planners hope to make good use of the time.
"We have a luxury here of the ability to do this in a more thoughtful and deliberate manner because we're not dealing with such high-profile and public properties. We can take our time and try and do it right," Spangler said. "We recognize that wherever we set the boundaries for the national park, whatever is on the other side of the fence is where the development is going to take place."
Volunteer task force
The task force is made up of more than 80 people, all volunteers. They were to report their progress Friday to the Flight 93 Advisory Commission, a federal panel charged with overseeing creation of the memorial.
Tim Baird, co-chairman of the task force's Memorial Design Solicitation Committee, said volunteers are currently interviewing candidates to run the design competition. He said they hope to name a consultant within a month and open the competition in late spring.
As with the Oklahoma City federal building memorial, in which designs were solicited from the public, Baird and others hope to keep all designs submitted as part of the permanent record of the site. In Oklahoma City, more than 600 designs submitted there are part of the memorial.
"The really only truly democratic way to go about this is an open competition," Baird said. "Everybody has feelings about the event and how they think it should be remembered and so it's very important."
In October 2003, the task force heard ideas from the public for the first time at a public hearing. Many residents around the site said they would like to see the land remain largely untouched.
XOn the Net: Flight 93 Memorial Project:http://www.flight93memorialproject.org