SOMERSET, Pa. — Wally Miller had one of the most important and most gruesome tasks after Flight 93 crashed into the field in Shanksville. As the Somerset County coroner, he was responsible for the scene, and all who were killed there.
“There’s days I feel that way and there’s other days I feel like it was a long time ago. I think about it every now and then,” Miller told Channel 11′s Melanie Gillespie.
Miller has served as coroner since 1997. He worked with his dad in the family funeral home since the early 1980′s.
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He clearly remembered where he was on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 when he got the news. His dad yelled to him from another room.
“He said, hey come out here. A plane hit the World Trade Center,” Miller said.
Minutes later, a second plane hit the second tower.
“I finally got word there was an explosion at the Pentagon, so I didn’t know much about that either, but I thought, wow, we’re getting attacked or something,” Miller said.
It was about 10 minutes later when Miller got a call from the Cambria County Coroner’s Office.
“His secretary called and said, hey Wally if you need any help with that plane crash, call us. And I was like what plane crash? She a plane crashed out at Lambertsville. I said what kind of a plane. She said a jet,” Miller recalled.
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Miller got through to 911 only through his county radio and heard the same report. It was unconfirmed that a plane crashed in Lambertsville. That’s when he got in his truck and raced to the scene.
“I said where Is this crash? And they said this is it. And I said no, I see debris but where is it? I thought I’d see a big fuselage, or a piece of a wing and they said no this is it,” Miller said.
All he saw was a piece of earth in an empty field near the edge of a strip mine scorched. He said the hemlock trees looked like burned match sticks.
“We walk up through there and it was just like smoke and fog everywhere, all you could smell was jet fuel. I could remember melted plastic dripping out of the trees, hitting the ground like sizzling. Boy that was a really eerie feeling,” Miller said. “We’d just go through those trees looking for items, personal effects and remains and anything we could find. We did, we found a lot. And down in the woods, some of the wind took some of it, down to Indian lake. There was mail on that plane and some of that got found as far away as New Baltimore.”
But Miller’s main priority amid the largest investigation of his career was preserving the solemn ground where the 40 passengers and crew on Flight 93 died.
“I have long maintained, this is essentially cemetery. The vast majority of remains were not recoverable. We covered it up with topsoil. It was essentially a mass grave,” Miller said.
Bringing the families together, to help them have a voice became Miller’s passion.
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“I knew these family members weren’t going to get represented, and if they didn’t find a unified voice, they weren’t going to get represented,” Miller said.
From his small county office, Miller found himself in the very public role of attending memorial ceremonies, but it was difficult.
“For 10 years I didn’t go out there. I went to the first anniversary. And then I didn’t go at all. And then the 10th anniversary, I had to get involved because we had a little funeral ceremony for those unidentified caskets. We had those 3 caskets of unidentified remains. I kind of reconnected with some of those people and it was kind of emotional,” Miller reflected.
Miller is retiring at the end of 2021. He’s hoping to spend what he calls, the fourth quarter of his life, rediscovering who he really is.
“I had to be that public guy for a long time and you kind of lose touch with who you really are, and now I finally have the time to rediscover that person with the ability and privilege of having all those years of experience to make yourself better,” Miller said.
But his biggest and most emotional case is always with him. He’s stepping down, hoping that fateful September morning never loses its influence on history.
“I think it’s a mistake not to learn lessons from history. I think as long as it’s presented factually, I guess, and in context with what the prevailing thought was at the time, it’s going to be valuable for people moving forward,” Miller said.
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