Officials, families dedicate Pentagon Sept. 11 memorial

On Thursday morning, seven years after hijackers commandeered a Boeing 757 passenger jet and plowed it through the western façade of the Pentagon, President Bush, senior administration officials, military and civilian personnel, and families of the victims gathered at the site to dedicate a memorial to the 184 innocent lives taken.

"These are not the ruins of the attackers," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. "They are the fortifications of our memory, resolve and love."

In a moving blend of music and speeches, organizers paid tribute to the 59 passengers and crew aboard American Airlines Flight 77 and the 125 civilians and military personnel killed at the Pentagon that day.

The victims included schoolchildren and their teachers embarking on a field trip, families traveling on vacation, and civil servants doing the taxpayers' work. The oldest was John D. Yamnicky, 71. The retired Navy test pilot had survived five crash landings in his 26 years of military service only to perish aboard a passenger aircraft. The youngest was 3-year-old Dana Falkenberg.

Pentagon Memorial Fund President James Laychak lost his brother Dave, who was sitting at his desk in the Pentagon when his office exploded with the fuel-laden jet's impact. "He was a good man," Laychak said during the dedication ceremony. "Like the other 183 men, women and children who were killed here, he left us way too soon."

The memorial has one goal, Laychak said: "We want people to remember."

Perhaps the most eloquent tribute came from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was in the Pentagon the morning of the attack and immediately began helping people trapped in the burning rubble. To many who were there that day, it was the controversial Defense secretary's finest hour.

"This morning we gather to dedicate this ground where a great building became a battlefield, where stone became dust, steel became shrapnel, where flames, smoke and destruction stole the lives of 184 men, women and children. This memorial tells the story of their last terrible moments on this earth. Moments when families were destroyed, when a symbol of America's strength was scarred, and when our country became, in the words of an American poet, 'acquainted with the knife,' " Rumsfeld said.

Those in the Pentagon on Sept. 11 "will never forget the way this huge building shook," he said. "We will not forget our colleagues and friends taken from us and from their families. We will not forget what that deadly attack has meant for our nation."

The memorial is designed around 184 sleek benches along the path of Flight 77, each suspended over a pool of water and inscribed with the name of a victim. Inscriptions for passengers aboard the flight are placed so viewers see sky in the background; the rebuilt Pentagon provides the backdrop for the names of its workers. Maple trees create a parklike setting and reflect the passage of time through the seasons.

Said Rumsfeld: "Here beneath the sloping fields of Arlington National Cemetery, fields that hold our nation's fallen, this building stands as a silent monument to the resolve of a free people. And so too, this memorial in its shadow stands not only as a symbol of a nation's grief, but as an eternal reminder of men and women of valor who saw flame and smoke and stepped forward to save and protect the lives of their fellow Americans on Sept. 11."