Newtown Native And Team Chosen As Finalists For Flight 93 Memorial Competition

On February 4, architect Karen Lewis, a 1993 graduate of Newtown High School, and her team, Jason Kentner, E. Lynn Miller, and Frederick “Fritz” Steiner, were selected as finalists for Flight 93 Memorial Competition. The team is one of five finalists chosen from 1,011 entries.

The team’s proposal, “Memory Trail,” uses architecture and landscape architecture together to make a path that honors the journey of the 40 passengers and crew members who died. The architecture of the visitor center serves as a way for the public to pay its respects.

“The building rises up from the hillside, placing visitors somewhere between the sky and the earth,” said Ms Lewis. Forty red maple trees form the “Allee of Honor,” which family members pass through to access the Sacred Ground. “The ‘Sacred Ground,’ is the site where the plane crashed and the passengers and crew are, essentially, buried. It is off limits to the general public. Only the family members are allowed there,” said Ms Lewis.

“Flight 93 is very different from the other attacks on 9/11 because it wasn’t an attack: it was a decision by 40 men and women to stop the plane,” she said. “Because no building was destroyed, and only two people witnessed the event, it’s difficult to design something that memorializes what happened in Pennsylvania.”

Currently, Karen Lewis is a faculty member at the University of Kentucky School of Architecture, where she teaches architecture studio and is leading a graduate research project on visual identity.

There have been three international competitions for the victims of the attacks on September 11. The first two were at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center sites. The third and final competition memorializes the passengers and crew of Flight 93.

A graduate of Newtown public schools, Karen Lewis was a member of the Newtown High School Class of 1993. She was involved in many creative and artistic extra curricular activities at the high school: choir, singers, plays and musicals, and was also the founder of the Newtown High School Art Club. Along the way, many other teachers and experiences helped hone her visual and artistic skills: Claudia Clancy, with whom she learned watercolor painting from 1987 to 1993; Jan Brookes, sociology and economics instructor at NHS, who encouraged Ms Lewis’s independent and critical visual thinking; Tony Inzero and Anne Doyle, both leaders of the Newtown High School Choir and Singers, who gave her opportunity for expression; and Alida Augenlicht, her voice coach, who taught her how to sing from her heart.

Ms Lewis then went on to Wellelsey College, where she received her BA with honors in architecture in 1997. In June 2004, she received her master in architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design.