The Cousins’ Trip, Part 2 – Flight 93 Memorial, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (posted 5/27/25)

From Gettysburg we drove north in a steady rain for the rest of Wednesday. I had hoped to visit Pittsburgh on this trip, and we would have done so on our original itinerary, which had us passing through Pittsburgh earlier, when the weather was still good.  But between the rain and our lack of time, we had to leave a visit to Pittsburgh for a future trip.

We did make a serendipitous stop though.  As we were on the PA turnpike, we saw a sign for the Flight 93 Memorial near Shanksville.  According to Waze we were 21 minutes from the site, which would close in 25 minutes.  Both of my cousins had seen it before and were moved by it, and said that it was well worth seeing if we’d had more time.  

But because I’m an Ameri-can and not an Ameri-can’t, I said, “Let’s drive dangerously fast in the rain and try to make it there before closing.”  Which we did.

In what felt like an omen, the rain got heavier as we got closer.  When we entered the road to the memorial site, a layer of thick fog descended over the road, and just as we’d driven what felt like a long way on that curving road and arrived at the parking lot beside the site, the rain went from “steady” to “downpour.” 

One cousin and I ran across the parking lot and into the Visitor Center, fighting against the flow of a busload of school kids who were exiting as the center prepared to close.  My cousin said that the best thing to do in just a few minutes was to pick up an earpiece on a display wall close to the entrance, and listen to three phone messages left on loved ones’ answering machines by three different women who were on the flight, and knew they were about to die. 

It’s a good thing I’m a stoic Midwesterner who is as tough as a two-dollar steak, or I would have been reduced to a crying mess.

As it was, I made it through two-and-a-half of the phone calls before a Center employee appeared and announced that the Center was closed.  We walked back outside into fog, a chilly wind and a slightly easing rain. 

The park site features several tall concrete walls, through which a black granite walkway goes from the parking lot to your right down to a gate made of hemlock beams to your left.  That black stone traces the final flight path of the doomed plane.  From the hemlock gate, the fog was so thick that I couldn’t see the field beyond it, into which the plane crashed. 

The names of the 40 innocents killed in the crash are carved on 40 individual white granite wall panels.  Two of the panels are poignantly different from the others.  On one, Toshiya Kuge’s name appears in the same black letters in which the names of the other dead are carved.  But his name also appears in four Japanese characters, in a barely visible white carving, in his mother’s handwriting.

The other unusual panel features the name of Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas in black, followed by three heartbreaking words in ephemeral, barely visible, unpainted letters: “and unborn child.”

(We don’t hate those terrorists enough.  If I were to make one change to the site, it would be to place a few flat stones on the edge of the field, away from the rest of the site.  On those stones would be carved the names of the terrorist hijackers, identifying them as hateful cowards, and inviting visitors to spit or urinate upon them, as the spirit moves them.) 

One other inspired feature at the site is a 93-foot Tower of Voices, which consists of a concrete frame holding 40 aluminum, tubular wind chimes, one for each of the passengers and crew.  When winds at the site exceed 12 miles per hour, the chimes make music. 

Unfortunately, the fog was so thick that I could just barely make out the structure as we passed it, and the wind wasn’t quite strong enough to coax music from the chimes.

Just as with our earlier time at Gettysburg, the grim weather seemed commensurate with the somber event being commemorated.  And in a strange way, our rushed visit seemed to hammer home the tragic brevity of life.  I wasn’t even able to make it through the short, brave, tortured phone calls before the experience came to a premature end.   

After that, we continued driving north, arriving after dark on the outskirts of Cleveland.  The next morning we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  The cold rain was once again so strong that we could barely make out Lake Erie.

I’d never been to Cleveland, but I’ve always had a grudging admiration for it, and for the tough and unpretentious Midwesterners who live there.  It was famously nicknamed “The Mistake on the Lake,” and I like Randy Newman’s droll, elegiac song “Burn On,” about the polluted Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969.  (“The Lord can make you tumble, the Lord can make you turn, the Lord can make you overflow… (but) the Lord can’t make you burn.”)

Cleveland has an NFL team…but it’s the Browns, a team that has often played tough, but never made it to the Super Bowl.  I’m not sure what the team owner was thinking by naming the team after their first coach, Paul Brown – who was a solid coach, with an uninspiring name.  To add insult to injury, brown isn’t even an inspiring color, and offers no logical mascot.

The NFL is full of admirable animal mascots (Bears, Jaguars, Lions), birds of prey (Falcons, Ravens, Eagles) and professions or groups of admirable people (Steelers, Patriots, Saints).  NFL helmets and uniforms are adorned with pirate flags, Viking horns, and lightning bolts.

But the Browns are… the browns.  Their helmets are a featureless brown.  As are their jerseys.  They used to play in a badly designed stadium called… Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and now they play in… Huntington Bank Field.  (Woohoo!)  We drove around the stadium in the rain, and saw the two statues of their greatest players:  Jim Brown (of course!), and Otto Graham (who, as you may have guessed from the name “Otto,” played 75 years ago). 

(Not to brag, but I live in a smaller town than Cleveland, with a college football team rather than a pro one.  But that team has the cool name of “Gators,” with an iconic Gator mascot.  We play in a stadium known as The Swamp.  And we have inspiring statues of three great Heisman winners, all of whom are still alive, and none of whom is named “Otto.”)

Despite all that, Cleveland is a gritty, underdog kind of city, and I like it.  Especially since we had a good time at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

We saw a lot of artifacts from the usual musical suspects: Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones, Johnny Cash.  But there was also a lot of respect paid to the R&B, country and Gospel roots of rock, as well as to some of my favorites, including the great John Prine.  Of course you can always quibble about who got too much attention (Cher, Bon Jovi and various rappers) and who got too little (nothing from Tom Waites, only one small picture of Cheap Trick, and very little on David Bowie, a particular favorite of my youngest daughter).

I liked that the museum had a “garage” section, composed of smaller rooms with instruments that visitors could play around with, and where some good musicians played several live sets throughout the day.                     

The last thing we did there was watch a short movie – in a theatre equipped with lights and shaking seats – of musical highlights from past HOF induction performances.  The song that got the most time came at the end, and was the great version of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” performed by an all-star band. 

Harrison’s son played – looking like a clone of his dad – and the highlights for me were Tom Petty’s singing and freaky little weirdo Prince’s amazing shredding on guitar. 

Midway through our seven-hour drive back to Illinois, the sun finally came out, making for a mellow ending to our trip.  After the grim sites of the last two days – bloody battlefields scarred by the fight to end slavery, and the lonely field in Pennsylvania scarred by a plane brought down by evil, microphallused jihadis – a celebration of raucous American music was a nice, palate-cleansing dessert.

Tomorrow, I’ll return to my usual political mockery.    

Until then, as always…

Hamas delenda est!