America Marks a Grim Anniversary

"I believe the truth should be spread," Kis said of his one-man protest at the crash site.

People came for many reasons, some alone and some by the busload, to a field even locals considered the middle of nowhere until a plane punctured the earth five years ago. Danielle Anderson, 18, and Angela McMillen, 21, drove hundreds of miles through the night from Dubois, Pa., to in hopes of creating a memory for themselves.

"My grandmother talked to me about WWII, and my parents talked to me about Vietnam," McMillen said. "This is what we're going to tell our children."

They came on a whim, leaving at 2 a.m. and arriving before the sun rose. About 1,000 people would follow, gathering under a slate-gray sky at 9 a.m. for the memorial service. There were prayers and victims' names read and politicians searching for words of comfort.

Afterward, Bush visited the crash site with families, taking a moment to talk to each. A chapel also held a service, with people spread among fold-out chairs. Alice Hoagland, mother of victim Mark Bingham, attended both ceremonies.

"This is really comforting to be here today, to look into the eyes of the other Flight 93 families and to grieve together and to find comfort together," Hoagland said.

If there was a lesson her son and others on Flight 93 learned that day, it was that there is power in numbers, she said.

Shanksville, a small town of about 250 people, often appears overwhelmed by the attention. This is a place where deer, raccoons and bears still wander up to back porches and where scrapple, a mix of cornmeal and pig fat, is a dietary staple. The plane crash ripped a hole in that solitude.

"I stomped these grounds when I was a kid," said Fred Bruening, 76, adding that he shot his first 10-point buck where the plane came down. "Just think of a boy who might have seen two cars all day long going down that road to Shanksville. I never would have never thought there'd be all these people standing here."

He and his wife had driven from Youngtown, N.Y., for the ceremony yesterday, as they have every year since the crash.

"This is our special place," said Diane Bruening, 62.

Up the hill, near the makeshift memorial that has grown each year, Kis stood in a gray suit and blue tie, handing out fliers and calling to passersby.

"Find out what really happened," he shouted.

"You're a moron," one man yelled back.

"What you're trying to accomplish has nothing to do with what is going on here," shouted Jim Kunkel, 38, of Pittsburgh. "Go away."

"I don't want them to have died uselessly," Kis yelled back.

Powell reported from New York; Vargas reported from Shanksville, Pa.; and White reported from Washington. Staff writers Michael A. Fletcher and Michelle García in New York contributed to this report.