Chardon Middle School students capturing Flight 93/Sept. 11 stories for oral history project
Published: Sunday, March 27, 2011
By Rachel Jackson
Few circumstances develop the way we would expect.
For Val McClatchey of Indian Lake, Pa., a simple interest in a certain make of automobile has led to a number of twists in her life's path she could never have anticipated a decade ago.
As a real estate agent and member of the North Eastern Ohio Camaro Club in August 2001, she replaced a series of disposable cameras with a digital camera for snapping images at car shows. Less than a month later, that camera happened to be sitting by her front door when a plane crashed in a field not far from her home. Acting on instinct more than conscious thought, she grabbed the camera, ran onto the porch and snapped a photo.
That photo was the first picture to be taken of the crash of Flight 93, a photo that permanently altered her life.
A decade later, the NEOCC connection came full circle for McClatchey. A fellow club member had seen a public notice asking for memories of the Sept. 11 tragedies from those with local connections. That club member told McClatchey, who then contacted Tim Bowens, a Chardon Middle School teacher with a long history of working to keep the Flight 93 memories alive.
McClatchey visited the school Friday to share her experiences and the now-famous photo with sixth-graders working on an oral history project.
She thought she had become numb to the experiences of that day through a decade of retelling them, but found that sharing them with a pair of Chardon sixth-graders helped bring the experiences back to her in a fresh way.
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The interviews were captured on video and will be combined with live portrayals and readings by students in a special presentation at Geauga Theater in May, said Kristan Rothman of Young Audiences.
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In June, Bowens' students will make the annual sixth-grade pilgrimage to Pennsylvania, to the Flight 93 memorial.
"I'll be there to greet them in Shanksville," McClatchey said.
http://news-herald.com/articles/2011/03/27/news/nh3811717.txt?viewmode=fullstory
The reporter should have said why Val's camera "happened" to be sitting by her front door; she was supposedly anticipating a helicopter fly-over the morning of 9/11.
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