On that infamous Tuesday, when the murder of nearly 3,000 people hurled civiliza tion backwards, healing seemed a remote commodity. But while September 11th shocked America, it could not steal its spirit. Ten years later, that spirit glows in memorials created to honor the victims of 9/11. It lives in the message expressed in those memorials: We will heal, but we will never forget.

Shanksville, PA., is a quiet place. It has a population of 245 and origins that date back to 1798, when christian Shank built a cabin there. And for the next 203 years, little happened to disturb its daily life. Barely three miles to the north lies a field that, except for its past as a mining area, was quieter still — until Sept. 11, 2001.

That day, at 10:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 93, carrying 40 passengers and crew and four al-Qaeda terrorists, crashed into that field, toward the edge of a wooded area. Of the four hijacked airplanes that changed American history that morning, Flight 93 was the only one that did not reach its target, assumed to be the White House or the U.S. capitol. And that was because its passengers, knowing they were about to die, did not go meekly. They organized a counterattack as they told their families on cellphone calls: “We’re going to fight back.” “We’re going to take control.” “It’s up to us.” “We’re going to jump them.” Shouts, sounds of struggle, breaking glass, screams. Then silence.

Today the site of the powerful impact, called the Sacred Ground, is the final resting place of those brave souls. In November 2009, after a design for the permanent memorial was chosen from 1,000 entries, a groundbreaking ceremony took place. The dedication of Phase 1 — memorial Plaza and a memorial Wall of Names — is set for Sept. 11 this year. eventually, a Tower of Voices housing 40 large wind chimes evoking the 40 voices heard aboard the airplane in its final moments will rise 93 feet above the plaza, and 40 memorial Groves of trees will line the path to the Sacred Ground.

During the afternoon of Sept. 10, there will be musical tributes and the laying of wreaths. At dusk, a candle will be lit for each victim of 9/11. On Sept. 11, as there has been every year since 2002, a memorial service will begin at 9:30 a.m., the time the passengers began their efforts to thwart the terrorists. At 10:03 a.m., the Bells of Remembrance will ring as each victim’s name is read aloud.

“A common field one day,” says the memorial’s mission statement. “A field of honor forever.”

About the same time the passengers on Flight 93 were foiling their hijackers’ plans, terrorists who commandeered American Airlines Flight 77 headed for the Pentagon in Arlington county, Va. As they lowered the plane in their approach at full speed, its wings knocked over light poles and its right engine smashed into a power generator. At 9:37 a.m. it crashed into the first-floor level of the Pentagon. The impact was so powerful that the front of the fuselage disintegrated and the debris penetrated 310 feet into the three outermost rings of the Pentagon. Huge fires raged, causing one section of the building to collapse. Fifty-nine passengers and crew and 125 people in the Pentagon were killed.

By September of the following year, the damage to the Pentagon had been repaired and America’s Heroes memorial opened. It includes photographs and biographies of the victims, a wall etched with the victims’ names and a panel of tributes.

The larger Pentagon memorial, which began construction in September 2007 and was completed the following September, spreads over nearly two acres and honors the 184 victims with 184 illuminated benches, each engraved with a victim’s name and arranged by age. The first is dedicated to three-year-old Dana Falkenberg; the last bears the name of John Yamnicky, Sr., 71. carrying the theme further, a wall along the edge of the memorial begins at a height of three inches and rises to 71 inches. The benches are arranged so that those representing people killed in the building face the Pentagon; the benches representing passengers and crew face skyward along the plane’s path.

On Sept. 11, the Pentagon will hold an invitation-only ceremony for families of the victims. After the ceremony, the Pentagon memorial will reopen to the public. At 9:37 a.m., a moment of silence will be observed throughout Arlington county.

It came to this — death by fire or death by falling. At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 roared into the North Tower of New York’s World Trade center. At 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. People on those floors were engulfed in flames. People on floors above were trapped. They could not go down. Those who hoped for rescue from the roof found the doors locked. The investment bank cantor, Fitzgerald lost 658 people. marsh, Inc. lost 355 people. As walls of fire roared toward them, at least 200 people chose death by jumping. Within hours, both towers collapsed, bringing down a third tower, damaging nearby buildings, killing more than 2,000 —including 343 firemen and 60 New York city and Port Authority police officers — and leaving 16 acres of smoldering rubble.

That morning, michael Arad, a 32-year-old architect who lived in manhattan’s east Village, saw the second plane crash into the South Tower and later watched the towers fall. During the sleepless nights that followed, he often walked the city, joining impromptu vigils, looking for consolation, sharing his sorrow with strangers.

In 2004, out of 5,201 entries in the competition for a permanent 9/11 memorial plan, Arad’s design was chosen. He named it Reflecting Absence.

“It was a design that came from a personal sense of grief. I wanted to create a memorial that would emphasize absence, that would show the threshold between the living and the dead and would also fit into the fabric of the city.”

Walking through the site before its dedication, Arad pointed to the centerpiece of his design: two enormous square pools set on the footprints of the original towers. each pool, about one acre in size, is 30 feet deep and surrounded by 30-foot waterfalls that cascade down all four sides, the largest manmade waterfalls in North America. They begin their descent as thousands of separate strands of water until about halfway down, when the strands join to become one billowing curtain.

“It begins as a symbol of individual loss; it becomes collective loss,” Arad said. In the bottom of each pool, there is a square open box. All around it, there is splashing water. In it, there is nothing. “It’s a void, an abyss,” the architect said. “We cannot see the bottom of it. That is the persistence of absence, the emptiness that remains.”

Around the pools, on bronze panels, are the names of all the victims of that day as well as those who died in the attack on the World Trade center in 1993. Here, Arad feels, is the threshold dividing the living from the dead. “We see the names, we can touch them, but they are forever inaccessible.”

Rather than arranging the names as lists, each is given an island of space and is individualized; the letters of some names are etched, others are raised. And they are grouped not alphabetically or geographically but together with the names of fellow victims according to suggestions made by surviving family members: friends, work mates and, for those who were on board the planes, often family.

Throughout memorial Plaza, more than 400 trees have been planted in an irregular pattern to give the feeling of a forest. One of them is a pear tree that somehow endured the devastation of 9/11. Found in the rubble, badly damaged, its trunk blackened, its branches burned off, it was taken to a nursery and slowly brought back to health. eight feet tall at the time of its near-death, it now reaches 30 feet. It is called the Survivor Tree.

While the memorial is a place of solace and contemplation, the rest of Ground Zero is a roar of vitality, noise and action. The glass and steel 9/11 memorial museum, built on the memorial’s eight acres, is scheduled to open in September 2012. While its imposing glass and steel entrance is on the same level as memorial Plaza, its galleries will spread out below, in the vast seven-story underground portion of the structure. On the remaining eight acres, four towers are under construction. One of them, Freedom Tower, will rise a symbolic 1,776 feet, a defiant 400 feet higher than the fallen towers. The northwest corner will house a performing arts center, and a train station will open in the northeast corner.

“We make cities,” Arad said, “and cities make us. And anything we build that can be shared contributes to the city. This project has been challenging. It has also been extremely rewarding.”

Following its dedication on Sept. 11, the memorial will open to the pubic Sept. 12. Until the nearby construction is complete, there will be only one entrance to the memorial; and visitors, limited to 1,500 at a time, will need a pass (free via the 9/11 website).

Soon after 9/11, pundits predicted the demise of lower manhattan. The area, they said, died with the towers. The pundits need to take another look. In the 10 years since, 10 hotels have opened; so have dozens of restaurants. There are new shops, clubs, galleries and performing arts centers. Since 9/11, an estimated $30 billion has poured into the area: more proof of the American spirit and another sign of the spirit of healing.

Memorials at the three crash sites honor the victims where they died. Others, including one in Pennsylvania and another in New Jersey, honor them where they lived.

Bucks county in Pennsylvania lost 18 people, nine from lower makefield Township. The families of the victims from the township wanted to pay homage to all 18. While discussing options for its location, a group of women found the answer. One day in 2002, as they were walking through a patch of undeveloped township land in Yardley, they noticed a tattered flag caught in the brush. They looked at the flag, they looked at each other and felt it was an omen — this is where the memorial should be. And so the township renamed the 62-acre stretch of land memorial Park and donated four acres to the families where, funded completely by donations, the families created the Garden of Reflection, a lasting remembrance of the ones they lost.

Along the path from the Gateway to the Garden of Reflection, visitors experience a jarring sight in the form of a large steel fragment from the World Trade center implanted at an angle pointing to New York. At the Garden of Reflection, the atmosphere turns to one of hope and healing. There is the Wall of Remembrance, where the names of all 2,973 victims are etched on glass panels attached to a curved, stainless steel rail along Remembrance Walk. The names of the county’s victims are etched on hand-cast glass panels overlooking a circular pool where twin fountains — symbols of the spirits of the victims — rise from the water. Two square voids in the center of the pool represent the fallen World Trade center towers. Along with other remembrances throughout the memorial are nine red maples, one for each lost makefield resident. In the Oak Tree Arboretum there are rows of oaks, symbols of strength and endurance. And there is a spiral walk with 42 lights representing the children in Pennsylvania who lost a parent that day. Finally, for all of us, there is the memorial’s theme: “After darkness … light.”

As viewed across the Hudson River from New Jersey to lower manhattan on the crystal-clear morning of Sept. 11, 2001, the World Trade center towers seemed to soar to the heavens, the essence of American strength and vitality. Hours later, after they had shattered, after planes crashed in Pennsylvania and into the Pentagon in Virginia, New Jersey had lost 746 of its residents, more than any state other than New York.

Today, the New Jersey September 11th memorial at liberty State Park, directly across the river from Ground Zero, pays homage to the people it lost with Empty Sky — two parallel walls, each as long as the width of the fallen towers. The names of the victims face each other on the brushed stainless steel interiors of the walls. Walking along the granite path between the walls, a visitor emerges to the same view, across the river to lower manhattan. It is a diminished vista today.

Flight 93 National Memorial — www.nps.gov/flni

Pentagon Memorial — www.whs.mil/memorial

9/11 Memorial, WTC Site — www.911memorial.org

Bucks County Garden of Reflection 9-11 Memorial — www.9-11memorialgarden.org

New Jersey 9/11 Memorial Foundation — www.nj911memorial.org

Downtown Alliance — www.downtownny.com