Family Members Look to Past, and Future, at Pentagon Memorial

American Forces Press Service ^ | Sept. 1, 2008 | GERRY J. GILMORE

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A group of family members, survivors and first responders shared their thoughts about 9/11 while visiting the nearly completed Pentagon Memorial here on Aug. 28.

Pentagon Memorial Fund manager Jim Laychak visits the Pentagon Memorial, Aug. 28, 2008. Laychak lost his younger brother, David, an Army civilian employee, during the terrorist attack on the Pentagon. The $22 million memorial, Laychak said, is a culmination of years of effort and hard work. “It is a great feeling of pride and accomplishment. Everybody has worked together on this over the past five and a half years,” he said.

Tom Heidenberger, 62, lost his wife, Michele, when American Airlines Flight 77 plunged into the Pentagon's west wall on Sept. 11, 2001. Michele was the senior flight attendant aboard Flight 77, said Heidenberger, a former commercial airline pilot who lives in Chevy Chase, Md.

Heidenberger recalled that his wife had called him at home in the morning from Dulles International Airport here before her flight departed for the West Coast.

“My last words to her were ‘Have a safe trip and I'll talk to you when you get to Los Angeles,'” Heidenberger said.

Heidenberger said he and his 21-year-old son, Thomas, had visited the memorial together two weeks ago. The memorial “gives us all a sense of closure,” he added.

Located just outside the Pentagon, the memorial park features 184 granite-topped, stainless-steel “sculptural elements” that represent the 125 lives lost in the Pentagon and the 59 deaths aboard American Airlines Flight 77. Each element has a reflecting pool of water at its base, which is flood-lit in the evening. The families of the attack victims had a hand in the memorial's design.

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Pentagon Memorial Dedication Ceremony, September 11, 2008

Also see Pentagon Memorial Fund

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The memorial, he said, is “beautiful” and “very, very tastefully done.”

As opposed to the infamous "crescent of embrace" at the Flight 93 Memorial.