Published: June 27, 2009 12:16 am      

Motorcyclists will ride to raise memorial funds

SHANKSVILLE — A Baltimore man wants to complete the seemingly easy feat that was denied his brother on Sept. 11, 2001: Traveling cross-country.

En route, Ken Nacke wants to raise $250,000 toward the Flight 93 National Memorial.

And cyclists can drive along with him for whatever part of the journey they care to – at least unofficially. Though tagalongs are welcome, Nacke cannot be responsible for them.

“Trying to move a whole line of riders across the country, logistically, it’s a nightmare,” he said in a telephone interview.

Besides, he wants the event to be about remembering the passengers and crew, not about the riders.

So he, three family members and a representative of the National Park Foundation will set off from Newark, N.J., on Sept. 3 bound for San Francisco.

They’ll stop at the Shanksville site later in the day Sept. 3.

“The whole concept of the ride is five core riders, eight days to get across the country, equal 40 heroes,” said Nacke, who lost his brother, Louis, on the ill-fated jetliner.

They’ll be leaving at 8:42 a.m. Sept. 3. The riders expect to arrive at San Francisco’s airport Sept. 11 about 11 a.m. Pacific time – 2 p.m. Eastern – the jet’s scheduled arrival time.

King Laughlin of the National Park Foundation manages private fundraising for the Flight 93 campaign.

“We are very supportive of the ride,” Laughlin said from his offices in Washington, D.C. “He could do a great service to our project, make a great contribution to our campaign and raise awareness of Flight 93 in the communities he’s going to pass.”

He said organizers are working on getting the towns involved: Having schoolchildren and military units turn out, providing police and fire escorts, and holding flag-raising ceremonies.

Laughlin is responsible for raising half the cost of the $58 million memorial in private donations. The federal government will cover the rest.

The fundraising effort is at the $15 million level, near where it needs to be with construction expected to begin as soon as this year. Laughlin said the money has poured in from nearly 50,000 donors from every state and more than a dozen countries.

The National Park Service expects to dedicate the memorial on the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

“Recently, the temporary memorial reached 1 million visitors, and that shows the public is interested,” Laughlin said. “With the national memorial, we can teach people in a way that currently is not possible. We want the next million to walk away with a deeper understanding of what Flight 93 really is.”

He said the national memorial will bring visitors closer to the crash zone, offering the public “a stronger physical and spiritual connection to the site.

“Visitors will be able to come up to the crash zone but not beyond that,” Laughlin said.

“That buffer will be preserved; that area is essentially a cemetery.”

Nacke got the idea for the 3,000-mile ride when – as a federal advisory commissioner – he considered the status of private fundraising.

“And I didn’t want to be flying across, taking a Winnebago across. I wanted to make it just as physically demanding on me as it was on them. The final 30 minutes, what they went through, the strain and the mental endurance,” he said.

Among the stops on the trip will be Shanksville and Cleveland, where the last radio contact with the plane was made.

No event is planned in Shanksville on Sept. 3, though the cyclists likely will stay overnight in Somerset.

Joining Nacke on the ride will be his brother, Dale, the Nackes’ cousins, Patrick and David White, and Jim McGettigan, a friend of the family from the National Park Foundation.

And Laughlin had a final thought about those attending Thunder in the Valley.

“Presumably, many of those Thunder riders will go over to Flight 93,” he said. “Motorcycle riders are very welcome at the temporary site.”