Published: Jul 29, 2005
9:06 AM EST
SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (AP) - The Somerset County
coroner will turn over control of the United Flight 93 crash
site to its owners Monday.
Coroner Wallace Miller has held the site as a coroner's
death scene since Sept. 11, 2001,
when the hijacked plane crashed into an abandoned strip mine
in Somerset County, killing 40 passengers and
crew.
Miller and a group of more than two dozen
volunteers this week made a final sweep of the property, looking
for debris. The group found airplane debris near a
section of downed evergreens and a small amount of human
remains, Miller said.
The remains can't be identified because of weather
degradation and the size of the sample, he said.
"The volume (of materials found) has dropped off considerably, to
the point that I now feel it's appropriate to close my involvement
in the case," Miller said.
Seven groups own land on or near the crash site,
which is just outside Shanksville and about 65 miles southeast of
Pittsburgh. The National Park Service is set to take control of the
tracts for a permanent memorial.
ap.lancasteronline.com/4/pa_flight_93
In the simplest of terms, it said that Somerset County Coroner
Wallace Miller was going to release custody of the crash
site where her mother,
Hilda Marcin, of Budd Lake, N.J., and
39 other passengers on United Flight 93
died on Sept. 11, 2001.
The 70-acre expanse will be returned to the six
original land owners and eventually purchased by the
National Park Service.
During the last four years, Miller became something of a celebrity
in Somerset County.
www.post-gazette.com/pg/05211/546112.stm
Newsmaker: Coroner's quiet unflappability helps him
take charge of Somerset tragedy
Monday, October 15, 2001
Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller and his wife,
Arlene O'Toole, filling in as an unpaid
deputy, work in an office crowded with files
and paperwork related to the Sept. 11 crash of United Flight 93.
(Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)
www.post-gazette.com/images2/20011015smmewsmaker.jpg
In the hour before the Sept. 11 Somerset crash, the coroner's
staff in
neighboring Cambria County had phoned, alerting Miller to the
terrorism in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Now, a month of 18-hour days later, the crash site has been
about as cleared of fragmentary remains
as Miller figures humankind can get it. The high science of
DNA is pairing remains with the dead.
Death certificates have been mailed out for all
but the four hijackers.
Miller continues to escort victims' relatives who trickle into
Somerset County to gaze on the crash scene.
"He's tired, very tired," said O'Toole,
usually an environmental health and safety
consultant with PPG Industries Inc.
in Allison Park, but filling in as an unpaid
deputy and spirit booster to the coroner.
His father, funeral director Wilbur Miller, an occasionally
gruff, usually affable soul,
was elected coroner for six terms, 24 years. Wallace
Miller was his deputy for the last 17.
In 1994, he bought the Somerset funeral home from his
father
and added another nine miles away in Rockwood. In 1997, he was
elected successor when his father, now 74, retired as
coroner.
He makes $35,854 a year as
coroner,
After the crash he swore in a cadre
of deputies --
helpers such as hospital workers and fellow funeral directors
-- but Miller chose largely to go it alone.
"It was as if the plane had stopped and let the
passengers off before it crashed," Miller said.
www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011015newsmaker1015p2.asp
Photo left: Sister Mary Ann Dillon, President of Mount
Aloysius College, poses for a photo with Wallace Miller as
she presents him with an honorary degree in Social Justice from the
College. Wallace Miller is the Somerset County Coronor who
humbly served our country at the crash site of Flight 93 in
Shanksville, Pa.
www.mtaloy.edu/may11.htm
Hundreds of searchers who climbed the hemlocks and combed the
woods for weeks
were able to find about 1,500 mostly scorched samples
of human tissue totaling less than 600 pounds, or about 8
percent of the total.
Miller was among the very first to arrive after 10:06 on the
magnificently sunny morning of September 11.
He was stunned at how small the smoking crater
looked, he says,
"like someone took a scrap truck, dug a 10-foot ditch
and dumped all this trash into it." Once he was able to
absorb the scene, Miller says,
"I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes,
because there were no bodies there
Immediately after the crash, the seeming absence of human
remains led the mind of coroner Wally Miller to a surreal
fantasy:
that Flight 93 had somehow stopped in mid-flight and
discharged all of its passengers before crashing.
"There was just nothing visible," he says. "It was the
strangest feeling."It would be nearly an hour before Miller
came upon his first trace of a body part.
Another 14 victims of Flight 93
identified
Saturday, October 27, 2001
At the same time, the high winds that buffeted the area over the
last few days have dislodged additional airplane
parts -- seat cushions,
wiring, carpet fragments and pieces of metal -- from trees near the
crash site.
"It's all aircraft parts, no human remains," Miller
said. "We've collected them in
10 recycling bin-sized containers and eventually we'll turn
them all over to United."
Yesterday's confirmation of victims' identities by
the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology DNA lab
in Rockville, Md., means that 34 of the 44 people who
were
aboard the jetliner crashed Sept. 11. have been
identified.
Flight 93 bound for San Francisco from Newark, N.J., had two
pilots,
five flight attendants and 37 passengers
aboard when it crashed in Stonycreek.
Miller said the lab is continuing to test DNA
material to verify the deaths of the last six crash victims.
He said DNA tests won't be able to identify the four
hijackers on board.
"To make a DNA identification we
need something from the victims or their family members
-- personal effects, or blood samples -- to match," Miller said.
"We don't have that kind of information about the
terrorists."
Identification of the victims through DNA
testing allows the coroner to issue death certificates
and return the fragmented remains to the families.
Miller said he will identify as many of the remains as he can.
Remains that can't be identified will be interred at a grave
in Somerset County.
"We already have issued presumptive death certificates so families
could begin to take care
of the affairs of those persons we haven't identified,"
Miller said.
"Now we can say for sure on 34 of the victims
and that gives the families, some of whom have held memorial
services, more of a sense of closure."
911research.wtc7.net/cache/planes/evidence/postgazette1027_flight93.html
When they arrived at the National Press Club, the event started
with a blessing from the
Rev. Larry Hoover, a
Lutheran pastor in Somerset County who also runs a family
lumberyard. The choice of Hoover had great local significance.
He and his wife, Linda, own eight wooded acres
with a secluded cabin that was their weekend retreat and their
planned retirement home, along with a sturdy old stone cottage
occupied by their 34-year-old son,
Barry.
But the shock wave from
Flight 93, a few hundred yards away, spewed debris through the
woods with such force that it blew out all the windows and doors
and shook the foundation on Barry's place. It turned the
whole Hoover property into a cemetery where human remains were
still being found months later.
