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Inscription on Pentagon Memorial adds an extra 'e' to Shanksville, Pa. |
By PAMELA GOULD
The Pennsylvania Department of Highways Web site notes that the Sept. 11, 2001, crash of United Flight 93 "put Shanksville on the international map of terrorism."
Unfortunately, that worldwide reputation hasn't been enough to keep the southwestern Pennsylvania borough's name from being misspelled.
Media outlets have done it. Bloggers have done it. Even the Justice Department did it in a news release eight days after the terrorist attacks--adding an extra 'e.'
Now that mistake literally is carved in stone.
The soon-to-be dedicated first permanent memorial to the Sept. 11 attacks, located at the Pentagon, has the error etched on a stone bearing the names of the 184 people killed in Arlington.
The black granite locator stone currently reads:
"On September 11, 2001, acts of terrorism took the lives of thousands at the World Trade Center in New York City, in a grassy field in Shankesville, Pennsylvania and here at the Pentagon.
"We will forever remember our loved ones, friends and colleagues."
Donna Glessner is a native of Shanksville and serves as vice chair of the Federal Advisory Commission for the Flight 93 Memorial. She was surprised to hear of the error but not upset.
"I've never seen Shanks-ville misspelled. That's what's shocking to me," Glessner said.
She knew early reporting of the terrorist attacks contained errors as the media and government officials scrambled to gather information, and she said that may have contributed to the mistake.
If it were up to her, she would change the wording entirely.
"The more accurate thing to say is that the plane crashed in Stonycreek Township in Somerset County. Shanksville is actually two miles away," she said.
Jean Barnak, project manager for the memorial, said she was glad to learn of the problem yesterday so that there would be enough time to get it fixed before the dedication
"I've talked to the contractor, and they're going to be out here next week," she said yesterday afternoon.
Jim Laychak, president of the Pentagon Memorial Fund and brother of one of the victims, said the error is just one of the issues to fix as the memorial is finalized. He said it can easily be rectified by removing that section of the stone, inlaying a new one and then redoing the engraving.
"I think it will give it even more prominence," he said.
The locator stone includes an alphabetical listing of the 59 victims on board American Airlines Flight 77 and the 125 people killed inside the Pentagon.
Pentagon Renovation Program spokesman Bill Hopper said staff had been working diligently to avoid misspell-ing any victim names.
"I know they've gone over the names of the family members multiple, multiple times," Hopper said.
No one reached at the Pentagon yesterday knew how Shanksville got through the review process with an extra 'e.'
"How it got there is less important than that we get it fixed," Barnak said.
Pamela Gould: 540/735-1972
Email: pgould@freelancestar.com
ABOUT THE MEMORIAL
The Pentagon Memorial will be dedicated the morning |
The Pentagon Memorial isn't the first memorial ever to need a spelling corrected. Officials in North Dakota's state capital were working last year to correct about 80 of 4,400 names on the state's veterans memorial. Family members have reported errors in the names on the wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. And when the memorial for the April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech was unveiled last year, it had one victim's name misspelled. |
