They opened the September 11th memorial that's inside the Pentagon yesterday to the public in remembrance of the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. At the last minute, Margo and I decided to go and see it. I'm glad we did.
We got to the Pentagon about ten minutes before the scheduled closing at 2pm (it was opened at 10am), and it looked like we were in the last group let in. We were escorted by an Army Honor Guard Sergeant who explained things as we went...and acted as the first line of security too, I'm sure.
The closest doorway to the memorial was immediately to the right of the hole that American Flight 77 put into the building. There's been some changes to that part of the building in the construction but this photo shows the door...right in the middle of the image above the top of the orange crane. To the right of the doorway (behind the tree in the photo, the tree isn't there anymore), they left one block scorched as it was on the day of the attacks and they carved "September 11, 2001" into the block as a reminder outside. Behind that wall is where the memorial is, and beyond that is a small chapel.
It was a very simple and elegant way to memorialize what happened that day for the people that were in the building, and for those that work there after. It was quite beautiful in its simplicity, actually. I knew going in that there was no photography allowed in the building so I didn't bother to bring my camera. When we were outside though, the Sgt said we could take pictures of the outside of the building...so I snapped a shot of the flag that was hanging where they hung it on September 11th with my cruddy cell phone camera.
-1.jpg "Picture(11)")
I haven't been able to find any pictures of the chapel, but here's a couple of the memorial area:
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