Pentagon, Nine-Eleven by Victoria Randazzo

The Pentagon is the office where the U.S. military works.  Military people and civilians, people who are not in the military, both work there.  The pentagon has five sides and five floors and it is located in Arlington, Virginia.  It was a tragedy on September 11, 2001 when the pentagon was attacked and bombed by a hijacked plane, American Airlines flight 77. The attack killed 189 people, including the five hijackers, 59 people aboard the plane, and 125 workers in the building.  Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the attack in 2004.  In May 2011 Osama bin Laden was found and killed.

After the attack, people were afraid of another attack like this one.  Millions of people gathered in churches to remember, question, pray and hope.  Bells rang across the land from New York to California.  It only took one year to rebuild the pentagon.  On September 11, 2008, a pentagon memorial was opened and dedicated.  It was built to remember the 184 victims who died in the terrorist attack on the pentagon.  The pentagon memorial is located right outside the pentagon.  It has 184 benches that light up and have the names of each person that died in the attack.  The people who died range in age from age 3 to 71 so there is a wall that starts at 3 inches, goes up and ends at 71 inches.  There are 85 maple trees planted in the memorial park. It cost 22 million dollars to build it. 

Ten years later, people attended a memorial of this sad event.  At the ceremony they made rubbings of loved ones names.  Sometimes people used copies of the program they were given with the names of the victims in it.  Jill Abbot, whose father died in South Tower, brought her own crayons and paper.  She gave many crayons to other people that lost family members in the twin towers or pentagon. An American flag drapes over the side of the pentagon where flight 77 crashed. I hope that nothing like this happens again.