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ARLINGTON, Va. -- Out of the 184 lives lost on 9/11, when American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked by five members of the terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, and crashed into the Pentagon, at least one was an Eastern Panhandle resident.
Shepherdstown resident Shelley Marshall was working in her office, on the southwest side of the Pentagon, when the Boeing 757-200 aircraft, flying from Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport, came crashing out of the sky. The day was to be her next-to-last as a budget analyst in the comptroller’s office of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and had started out just like any other, with her arriving at work in time to drop off her three-year-old son, Drake, and 20-month-old daughter, Chandler, at the Pentagon’s daycare center. She would, shortly thereafter at around 9 a.m., call her husband, Donn Marshall, with the news that the World Trade Center had been struck by an airplane.
Only a half hour later, the 37-year-old’s life was taken away from her, when a similar tragedy occurred at her place of work. She was one of 125 employees, service members, contract workers and emergency responders to be killed by the impact of the plane, the ensuing fire or the smoke inhalation, alongside all 58 passengers and crew members who had been on board the aircraft. Those lost did not include her and her husband’s two children, who gave Donn a continued purpose for living, after Shelley’s passing.
“My kids are my whole life,” Donn would later go on to say.
Twenty-five years after the fact, the loss continues to be felt by the family. Its members pay tribute to Shelley’s life, by speaking to the public about the experience -- right before the last anniversary of 9/11, Donn gave a presentation to a group of middle school students, who were born more than a decade after the terrible event -- and by making an annual trip to the Pentagon on 9/11 itself, where a memorial was established in 2008.
“We’ve got to keep the memory alive,” Donn, who now lives in Martinsburg with his wife of 19 years Heather Marshall, said of their efforts.
Along with the Marshalls and the many other friends and family members of those whose lives were stolen that day on the grounds of the Pentagon, one other notable figure will be making his way to the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial over the next few days. United States President Donald Trump is expected to break from the presidential tradition of visiting the site of the World Trade Center crash, to instead make the shorter journey to the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial, this year.
This will not be Trump’s first connection with the memorial as, in February, he signed into law the fiscal year 2026 Defense Bill, which designated $12 million in federal funding for the purpose of establishing a Visitor Education Center adjacent to the memorial. The groundbreaking for the VEC, which will cost a total of $35 million to complete, was held Thursday. With the VEC’s planned opening in 2029, the memorial will no longer be the outlier among the three 9/11 attack sites, in New York City and Shanksville, Pa., which have both had operating VECs of their own for several years.
Visiting the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial is free and relatively easy to do, as it is open 24/7. Paid parking is about a 10 minute walk away from the Pentagon and memorial, at 1 Rotary Road in Arlington, Va.
To learn more, visit pentagonmemorial.org.