Francis Delmar, Supervisory District Ranger, Independence NHP
Interviewed by Doris D. Fanelli, Ph.D., Chief, Division of Cultural Resources
March 15, 2002 at Independence National Historical Park

FRANCES DELMAR: We of course had been told we would be closed on the 12th and then we opened on the 12th. So we opened at 9 o'clock. That was a real source of pride to us that we got open for tours at 9 a.m. on September 12th.

But I certainly wouldn't say we were well -organized about it. We were making it up as we went along because all of a sudden we had this barricade around Independence - all the way at that point, all the way around Independence Square. You couldn't walk anywhere on the square…anyone inside the barricade had to be escorted.

[B]efore September 11, you would come in and take a tour of Independence Hall and then you were free to roam and there would be rangers in the West Wing, Congress Hall and City Hall. But now all of a sudden we had to do tours of all the buildings and our rangers had no time to figure this out. They just had to go and start doing it…

But we really have here a very important mission and our staff has taken a great deal of strength from that…[P]eople since September 11 have come to us seeking answers more so than ever before in history, or ever before in my memory…

[W]e've had a lot of adults who are very thoughtful and they get in Independence Hall and they want to know about Constitutional questions, individual freedoms versus national security. And they're coming to this place where the Constitution was written. Now of course the whole Federal government can't answer that question so my rangers can't answer it either. But they can certainly address the historical issues.

And one of the very first tours after September 11, I went in just to see how we were doing and I heard one of our rangers giving a tour. And at the end assembly room talk a man asked a question and he said, if the founders were alive today what would they think of all this? And she gave just a wonderful answer with no time to think about it. She said, any of the founders who suddenly came back would be amazed at the technology to build the twin towers and the technology to destroy the twin towers. They would not have been amazed at the evil that destroyed the twin towers. They knew about evil. They were very well aware.

That's why the Constitution is written the way it is. So to think that somehow they were naive in the 18th Century, no…Certainly the plane and the tower would have been amazing to them, but they were aware for the potential for human evil. They were aware of the potential of acts of violence done in God's name. That's very clear when you read the primary source documents. So I thought that was a great answer to a very difficult question.

September 11, 2001 Oral History Documentation Project
Northeast Region, National Park Service

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