Trailheads

Posted by on Jun 7, 2021 in | Comments Off on Trailheads This year marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that resulted in airliner crashes into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Anyone old enough to remember 9/11 can recall the wall-to-wall news coverage and vivid sense of national grief about the destruction and lives lost. The...
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The Man for the Moment: Tom Ridge and the 9/11 Inflection Point

Posted by on Jun 4, 2021 in | Comments Off on The Man for the Moment: Tom Ridge and the 9/11 Inflection Point   On the cloudless, blue-sky morning of September 11, 2001, Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, unaware the State Police in Harrisburg were looking for him, was at his Erie home enjoying the crisp air while he cleared his raised flower beds of dead stems and dried leaves. Gardening was a favorite pastime for the Vietnam War veteran and former congressman. For Ridge, that peaceful moment in his...
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Col. Paul J. Evanko’s Field Notes from 9/11

Posted by on Jun 3, 2021 in | Comments Off on Col. Paul J. Evanko’s Field Notes from 9/11 The United States was changed forever on the morning of September 11, 2001, when it was attacked by members of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. One of the four airliners that was hijacked as part of the attack was United Airlines Flight 93, originally scheduled from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California. Flight 93 crashed in a field in Stonycreek Township, near Shanksville, in...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Jun 3, 2021 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter Twenty years ago, Pennsylvania became the setting for one of the most tragic but heroic episodes in recent U.S. history, when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a meadow in Somerset County after passengers fought back at al-Qaeda hijackers who had planned to use the aircraft for an attack on an unknown target in Washington, D.C. In this issue we mark the somber anniversary of 9/11 with the...
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From the Executive Director

Posted by on Apr 15, 2020 in | Comments Off on From the Executive Director People often think of history as events in the distant past, so it’s perhaps natural that visitors to our PHMC sites look for objects from Pennsylvania’s earliest historic periods. Our collections do not disappoint. If you wander through The State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, you’ll find fluted projectile points from the Shoop archaeological site in Dauphin County that date to the last...
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Representing Pennsylvania’s “Precious Heritage”: Art of the State 50

Posted by on Jun 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on Representing Pennsylvania’s “Precious Heritage”: Art of the State 50 Art of the State is an annual juried exhibition that has been showcasing the work of Pennsylvania’s artists at The State Museum of Pennsylvania since 1968. The body of art that has been exhibited reflects half a century of creative endeavor in the Keystone State. Through the years, exhibitors have shared their ideas and engaged viewers in the categories of painting, photography, craft,...
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From Memory to Memorial by J. William Thompson

Posted by on Jun 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on From Memory to Memorial by J. William Thompson From Memory to Memorial: Shanksville, America, and Flight 93 by J. William Thompson Penn State University Press, 200 pp., paper $19.95 The crash site and memorialization of Flight 93 near Shanksville, Somerset County, hasn’t received as much attention as the other sites touched by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This short, thoughtful and exceptionally well-written book brings...
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Executive Director’s Message

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Executive Director’s Message A crater in a reclaimed coal mine in Somerset County hardly seems a potential site for a national memorial. However, as everyone knows by now, a dramatic story of terror and courage took place in the airspace above western Pennsylvania and ended with the fatal crash of United Airlines Flight 93 near Shanksville during the terrible morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Since that tragic day,...
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September 2001 Meeting of Historic Preservation Board

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on September 2001 Meeting of Historic Preservation Board In the dizzying aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans realized that their lives would be forever changed. Terrorism even impacted the routine – and frequently mundane – ways in which business had been conducted. For its September 2001 meeting-held, incidentally, on Tuesday, September 11 – the Commonwealth’s Historic...
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Letters to the Editor

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters to the Editor Dreams Do Come True I enjoyed the update about The Dream Garden, the Maxfield Parrish mural installed at the Curtis Building in Philadelphia [see “Executive Director’s Message,” Fall 2001]. We can only hope that it will be saved for Philadelphians. I had heard that Parrish created another mural for the employee cafeteria, which was, I believe, located near the top of the...
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