Maryland, DC, 911 Memorial
By Marianne Rzepka

In early June, Margaret and her favorite sister Marianne drove to Rockville, Maryland, just outside Washington D.C. for a memorial to honor Dr. John Sever, their sister-in-law Beverly’s father, who was a pioneer in the field of pediatric infectious diseases, including polio and AIDS. Marianne writes about the trip.

Friday Morning: After an 8-hour-plus drive from Michigan to Maryland, we checked into our hotel in Rockville - where a know-nothing clerk seemed not to know what a luggage rack was or - since we were plenty hungry - the location of the closest restaurant.

The clerk said there were no restaurants within walking distance, but after nine hours in the car, we wanted to stretch our legs, so we took off for a little pre-dinner stroll. We walked across the street and around an office building and saw a parking lot in front of an Italian restaurant, where we had a nice dinner. When we got back to the hotel, we told the clerk about the nearly next-door restaurant, and she told us, “Some people don’t like Italian food.”

Saturday Memorial: A long day for Dr. Sever’s memorial services, with family and friends attending church services and a public gathering to remember his personal and professional life.

After a memorial service for family and close friends at the Potomac United Methodist Church in Potomac, followed by internment in the church cemetery, we met at a brunch for family at a local restaurant, where we sat at a Rzepka table with our brother Chris and Beverly, their son Matt and his girlfriend Eveline, and our niece Christina.

Mike McGovern, chairman of Rotary’s International PolioPlus Committee who flew in from Maine for the memorial, said Dr. Sever hoped he would live to see the end of polio in the world. Though the disease can still be found in Pakistan and Afghanistan, there are only four cases left of live polio virus today, McGovern said. He cited estimates that 20 million people are alive and healthy today because of the polio vaccine.

When the afternoon memorial finished, Beverly and Chris invited a group of us over to their house in Rockville for food and conversation, to end the day.

Sunday on the National Mall: Despite the lack of a working clock radio and a room refrigerator that froze anything in the top two shelves, Margaret and I had a good night’s sleep in preparation for a day at the National Mall in Washington D.C.

We took the Metro to the station only a few blocks from the Mall. Luckily for Margaret, who had forgotten to bring a hat on this sunny day, we came across a Nordstrom Rack - open on a Sunday morning - to get her a new, sturdy chapeau. It came in handy as we traversed the two-mile long grassy mall - though our feet felt like we had walked 200 miles - from the National Botanic Gardens to the obelisk of the Washington Monument and beyond to the stately Lincoln Monument.

At the botanic garden, which celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2020, the two of us strolled outside though beds of trees, bushes and flowers and inside the glass domed conservatory, where you could take the world’s slowest elevator from the floor of a tropical jungle up into the steamy upper branches.

Outside, we took our time walking west along the Mall, stopping for water and snacks on our way. It was an active day out on the mall: We passed kites flying next to the Washington Monument, tourists riding Segways and a softball game.

Since we only had one day for everything the two of us wanted to see, Margaret and I walked past a lot of buildings we might want to go into someday, including the National Gallery of Art, where we had lunch at their outdoor cafe; the curvilinear National Museum of the American Indian; The National Museum of American History; and the massive National Museum of African American History and Culture. We also found our way past the World War II memorial, as well as the Vietnam War and Korean War walls.

Unfortunately, because of our tendency to take too many photos, our cell phones were nearly zero percent by the time we reached the Lincoln Memorial, so we depended on an old-fashioned paper map to find the shortest way back to the Metro station and about 40 minutes later, we were at the Rockville parking lot.

We got back to our hotel - where more responsive staff were behind the front desk - to freshen up, then met with Beverly at our favorite Rockville Italian restaurant for dinner, where the waiter remembered us.

Monday Visit to Flight 93 National Memorial: Margaret and I were packed up and gone from our hotel (after leaving a nice tip for the housekeepers who gave us more towels and tissues) about 9 a.m., heading for home via a stop at the Flight 93 National Memorial.

There are few signs to get to the national memorial, and the mountains around the roadway made GPS spotty, but we found it - again with the help of a paper map.

The memorial marks the spot where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into the fields of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, on 9/11. The plane was one of four hijacked on that day: two hit the World Trade Center in Manhattan and another hit the Pentagon, but the passengers banded together to attack the hijackers who were aiming the plane into Washington D.C. The passengers and crew broke into the cockpit, and in the ensuing struggle the terrorists flipped the plane upside down and  slammed it into the ground.

The area, once closed to the public, now has an imposing visitors center with banks of photos, video and sound that tell the story. The visitors center stands on a hill overlooking the impact site and part of the debris field, and you can see the 17-ton sandstone boulder that marks the impact site.

Visitors can follow a trail down from the visitor center to a walkway running alongside the debris field. At the end of the walkway is a row of marble panels, each engraved with the name of a passenger or crew member who died on the flight.

A short drive away, near the entrance, is a 93-foot tall Tower of Voices that holds 40 chimes for the 40 passengers and crew on Flight 93. When we stopped there, the winds were not strong enough to move the polished aluminum chimes, but we listened to them on our phones: https://www.nps.gov/flni/planyourvisit/tower-of-voices.htm.

We left the National Monument after about two hours and headed for home with stops only for gas and restrooms. The sun was just going down when we got off the highway and headed to Margaret’s house. We pulled into her driveway just after 9 p.m., almost exactly twelve hours after leaving Rockville.

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