SHANKSVILLE, Pa. Two senior citizens from 450 miles away get up to talk to the group of school kids about something that happened a decade ago. The kids are quiet and polite, but they look bored before Frank Guerra says a word.

This might not go well.

“Our granddaughter, Deora Bodley,” Frank says, “she was 20 years old at the time.”

Frank has told this story hundreds of times now. To school groups and civic clubs, on the golf course and at the supper table. Now to the assembly at the Shanksville-Stonycreek School. Deora, his first grandchild. She was on United Flight 93. She was 20 at the time.

A question for this 9/11 journey: Ten years after, how do you mourn?

Frank and his wife, Linda, live in Pinehurst. His former wife, Patricia – Deora’s grandmother – died of cancer in 2004. He married Linda in 2007. He’s 80 but looks a lot younger. If you mention that to him, he gives you a dollar.

He and Linda wear T-shirts with the names of the 40 passengers and crew members who died on Flight 93. Four terrorists took over the flight after it took off from Newark. They pointed the plane toward Washington. Passengers who called their families found out that other planes had struck the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Some of the passengers went after the terrorists. The plane crashed in a field three miles from Shanksville. It was so close the ceiling shook here at the school.

“She would have been a junior at Santa Clara (University),” Frank tells the school kids. “There was a grade school near the campus. She would help the kids with their homework. When she left, they always wanted her to stay a little bit longer.”

Thursday morning, Frank and Linda drove out to the temporary memorial, on a hillside above the crash site. There’s an old barn with exhibits inside, and a walkway leading out to an overlook. It rained all morning. Still, people left roses and poems and little totems; on Friday, someone had tied a small North Carolina flag to the fence.

Frank has been out here at least once a year since the crash. This time, they ended up on the news. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was giving a press conference, and someone asked if family members were around, and Frank and Linda ended up in the shot.

The temporary memorial shut down for good Friday afternoon, and the permanent memorial – down the hill, closer to the crash site – opens today. There has been some grumbling over the memorial – how much to spend, why it’s taken so long, how much should be for the families and how much for other guests. Frank is a little worried about the new site. He liked that the old one was simple.

“You know how it is,” he says. “When something is pristine and you destroy it… you don’t want to see that.”

There’s been some post-9/11 grumbling in Shanksville, too. It’s a small town, only a couple hundred people, and a few folks are tired of everybody coming through asking questions. Nobody on the plane was from Shanksville. It just happened to happen here.

Nobody’s quite sure about the right thing to do.

“She would come down to North Carolina every summer to visit,” Frank tells the kids. “We took her to Myrtle Beach. She always drove the cart, loved to drive the golf cart when her granddad played.”

What’s OK to talk about, 10 years down the road? How many topics are still off-limits? How much grieving is over the top?

Out in the hallway, before the assembly, the Guerras chatted with Tom McInroy, the Shanksville school superintendent. It turns out he’s a pilot. All of a sudden he started telling a story about his plane almost running out of gas in a storm. Then Linda told one about a bumpy flight that scared her to death. Everybody laughed those dodged-a-bullet laughs. Nobody mentioned the reason we were all standing there, the bullet that wasn’t dodged.

It didn’t feel strange. It felt… 10 years later.

“There’s a lot more memories I could share of Deora,” Frank tells the kids.

But he gives the mike to Linda, and she has brought some gifts from North Carolina – a U.S. flag, a plaque, a T-shirt and backpack from a school back home.

She asks the kids if they have questions. Nobody does. The principal says they can go.

As Frank and Linda start to sit down, a girl walks over. Her name is Maria McClatchey. She’s 17, a senior. She shakes Frank’s hand.

“I just wanted to thank you,” she says. “Being so close to the crash site, I feel like we get jaded about it. But it does mean something to us.”

She heads back to class. Frank turns to Linda. He holds up a finger.

That’s one.

Tommy: 704-358-5227; ttomlinson@charlotteobserver.com; facebook.com/tommytomlinson; Twitter @tommytomlinson; blogging at http://ttomlinson.blogspot.com

About Tommy’s journey

Tommy is on the road to cover the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11. On Friday, he wrote from Washington, D.C., where terrorists attacked the Pentagon; today, from Shanksville, Pa., where Flight 93 crashed in a field after passengers fought the hijackers; and for Sunday and Monday from New York, where they’re rebuilding at the World Trade Center site.

You can help

If you have 9/11-related ideas for Tommy – things he should see or people he should meet – email him at ttomlinson@charlotteobserver.com.