A Congressional Gold Medal awarded to those who died at the site of the memorial will be presented today as part of the ceremony. Bells will be rung and the names of the victims will be read at 10:03 a.m., the moment the airliner crashed as passengers fought with hijackers for control of the jet.
Today’s ceremony also comes as the National Park Service marks progress on a $17 million to $23 million phase of the project that includes a visitors’ center and a learning center, which officials hope will boost the number of annual visitors to the memorial from 300,000 to more than 500,000. Ground was broken on the project a day before the 12th anniversary ceremony last year, and a media tour of the construction progress was held Wednesday.
“We have to make sure there will be a place to come in the future to learn about what happened,” Gordon Felt said just after dawn Thursday, near the tent where the memorial ceremony was to take place. Felt’s brother, Edward, was among the passengers killed. Gordon is president of the Families of Flight 93, a support group of victims’ families which has had input on the memorial park’s design.