They came in white uniforms, blue capes and white caps, bearing a birthday gift that couldn’t be collected and a message that can.
About 45 active and retired nurses from Pennsylvania and Maryland visited the Flight 93 National Memorial on May 20 to present a tribute to their nursing “sister,” Flight 93 passenger Jean Hoadley Peterson, on what would have been her 80th birthday.
The nurses were members of Nurse Honor Guards from seven Pennsylvania counties, including Somerset and Cambria, and also from Frederick, Maryland. These groups make presentations at funeral services and other events that honor current and former nurses in their communities for their contributions to the nursing profession.
After reading selections that honor nurses for their service and recognizing Peterson’s nursing career, the group made a “Send Off from Duty” presentation that released Peterson from her nursing duties. They then placed a wreath in her honor at the Memorial Plaza entrance, and walked in procession to the Wall of Names to lay a nurse’s cap and a white rose on the walkway below Peterson’s name.
The Somerset County Nurse Honor Guard began organizing the tribute for Peterson in February, then chose May 20 in honor of her birthday, said Roberta Nicholson, who started the county’s honor guard in October 2024.
“We need to be honored,” she said. “We have decided to call ourselves a sisterhood of nurses, which is what you saw today. You saw a sisterhood of nurses getting together to honor someone.”
Who was Flight 93 passenger Jean Hoadley Peterson?
Peterson was 55 and a resident of Spring Lake, New Jersey, when she and her husband, Donald, boarded United Airlines Flight 93 in Newark on Sept. 11, 2001, to take advantage of an earlier flight for a vacation trip to Yosemite National Park in California, according to Peterson’s profile at the Flight 93 National Memorial.
She had earned a nursing degree from the University of Rochester and a master’s degree in education from Columbia University. She was a registered nurse and a nursing instructor, and served as a volunteer emergency medical technician among other volunteer efforts she gave to her community.
Peterson’s family could not attend the ceremony at the Flight 93 National Memorial, but “they were very happy that we chose May 20 to do this tribute because that was Jean’s birthday,” Nicholson said.
She added: “It’s a tribute to get to honor other nurses. Sometimes I feel nursing gets pushed to the background, even though we are the backbone of the healthcare community. We are very rarely honored in any way, other than when we are retired.
“So even though it takes us to pass for us to find out that we are an integral part of the sisterhood of nursing, it is an honor to be able to do that for anyone.”
Nicholson said she and many others in the Nurse Honor Guard were called in to work on Sept. 11, 2001, and remember the day well, 25 years later.
“For most of us in the Johnstown area and Somerset County … most of our hospitals were put on lockdown immediately. We were expecting mass casualties, which is something we had drilled for but never had to do,” she said.
“I think the worst part was when it was all clear, because there were no survivors. That was a heartbreaker for all of us.”
