September 11, 2001 Memorial (Scranton)
Scranton, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
[Front] In memory of the innocent and the heroes September 11, 2001... [Back] Lackawanna County Native Laura Lee (DeFazio) Marabito... AmAir Flight 11 Passenger Jerry Moran, Jr.... The Pentagon Daniel Christian Schaufler... Paramedic Volunteer Ground Zero… transcription continues on the marker
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The Story
This memorial remembers the innocent victims and the heroes of September 11, 2001, with special honor to those tied to Lackawanna County. Among them are county native Laura Lee (DeFazio) Marabito, a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 11; Jerry Moran, Jr., who died at the Pentagon; and Daniel Christian Schaufler, a paramedic who volunteered at Ground Zero. Their names bind a small Pennsylvania region to the national tragedy of that day.
Why it matters
The September 11 attacks reshaped 21st-century America, and local memorials like this one connect a defining national event to the individual lives and hometowns it touched.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This memorial belongs to our own era, and to a day that most adults old enough to remember it can still recall in vivid detail. On the morning of September 11, 2001, coordinated terrorist attacks struck the United States, and the ordinary rhythm of a clear late-summer day gave way to shock and grief that spread across the country within hours.
Scranton sits in the anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania — a proud, close-knit corner of the country whose sense of community runs deep. In places like Lackawanna County, national events are experienced through local ties: a name you recognize, a family from the next town, a face you might have passed at the grocery store. That is exactly how this memorial frames the tragedy.
In the years after 2001, communities everywhere searched for ways to hold onto what had happened and to honor those it touched. This memorial is part of that national impulse to remember — but it does its remembering in a distinctly local key, anchoring an event of staggering scale to the people and hometowns of one Pennsylvania county.
People & events
The memorial is dedicated, in its own words, to the innocent and the heroes of that day — and then it does something powerful: it names people, tying this small region directly to the events of September 11.
Among them is Laura Lee (DeFazio) Marabito, a Lackawanna County native who was a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 11. There is Jerry Moran, Jr., who died at the Pentagon. And there is Daniel Christian Schaufler, remembered here as a paramedic who volunteered at Ground Zero in the aftermath — one of the many who went toward the disaster to help in the days that followed.
Together, these names tell the layered story of that day and the response to it: those lost aboard the aircraft, those lost at the sites that were struck, and those who answered the call to serve amid the ruins. By setting these individuals side by side, the memorial insists that a national catastrophe is, in the end, made up of individual lives — each with a family, a hometown, and a story that did not begin or end on one September morning.
Its place in the American story
The attacks of September 11, 2001, reshaped twenty-first-century America — its politics, its security, its sense of itself, and the lives of countless families. It is one of those rare events so large that the nation reckons time by it: before, and after.
An event of that magnitude can feel almost too big to grasp. That is precisely where local memorials do their essential work. By naming residents and neighbors, a marker like this one translates an overwhelming national tragedy into something a community can hold, mourn, and pass on. It says: this did not happen only to the country in the abstract — it happened to us, to people from here.
Across the United States, thousands of such memorials now form a distributed, grassroots record of that day. Each one links a hometown to the larger history, ensuring that the human scale of September 11 — one life, one family, one town at a time — is never lost inside the sheer size of the number.
If you visit
Approach this memorial as a place for reflection. It is not a spectacle; it is a place to stand quietly and read names. Give yourself time to take in the front's dedication to the innocent and the heroes, and then the back, where the individual names are set down.
Read those names slowly. Each represents a person with roots in this region and a distinct connection to the events of that day. Reading them aloud, or simply pausing over each one, is the truest way to honor what the memorial was built to do.
If you're traveling through northeastern Pennsylvania, a stop here offers a moment of stillness and perspective. It is the kind of place that reminds you how a distant national event reached all the way into one community — and why that community chose to make sure its people would be remembered close to home.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Laura Lee (DeFazio) Marabito
- · Jerry Moran, Jr.
- · Daniel Christian Schaufler
Related events
- · September 11, 2001 attacks
Themes & tags
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