A "quiet" tradition continued Saturday in Montoursville.
Participants in the 5k run/walk held in honor of the 21 Montoursville Area School District students, teachers and chaperones who died on TWA Flight 800 got an extra boost as a group of cheerleaders from North Plainfield, N.J., High School ran with racers and cheered along the sidelines to show their respect and provide encouragement.
This was the cheerleaders' first year participating in the race, held every five years since the 1996 plane crash, but the squad's visit to Montoursville has become an annual tradition.
"It started exactly when the plane went down in 1996," said coach Skip Pulcrano. "Our cheerleaders always have focused on community service, locally and nationally. Right after the plane went down ... we made a trip to Montoursville and met with the cheerleaders at Montoursville. Ever since then, we've done it every year."
Pulcrano originally brought girls from a previous team, Shore Cheer, on the 400-mile round trip to visit the grave sites, but the North Plainfield team took over when he began coaching at the high school five years ago. The cheerleaders spent the first 13 years anonymously placing flowers on the victims' graves until 2009, when they finally got "caught" by a parent.
We've been doing this for 15 years. It wasn't until two years ago that one of the parents spotted the girls holding a memorial at the high school park. (A parent) was so touched by it that they invited our girls up for lunch last year," Pulcrano said. "For the 13 years prior, the parents said they've always seen the flowers on the grave sites and they didn't know who it was until two years ago."
Jessica Lane, senior captain for the squad, has visited Montoursville more than once in her time as a cheerleader.
"Last year, during the day we went around handing out flowers in the downtown area just as a memorium and a reminder to the people of Montoursville that it was the anniversary and just to let them
know that people care, outside of their small town," she said. Lane said she most looks forward to "just making sure the family members feel that somebody cares for them, that somebody's reaching out to them."
In addition to visiting the Montoursville site each year, the cheerleaders make an annual trek to the 9/11 crash site of Flight 93 in Shanksville. One of their visits to the site coincided with the visit of a filmmaker, and the cheerleaders ended up getting caught on film for a 2010 documentary, "Visiting Shanksville in the Rain," which features different groups of people who visited the site to pay their respects to the victims of the plane crash.
"On the anniversary of 9/11 every year we visit all three crash sites," Lane said, adding, "I think any loss that more than one person shares ... being around the people who lost someone, that just brings the team together. It is a very emotional trip for us. It brings us all closer together."
Last year, the squad was awarded the 9/11 National Remembrance Flag, created by Steve and Joanne Galvin to honor heroes of 9/11. In addition, the team won the AmeriCheer National Community Service Team of the Year award twice. The cheerleaders have logged more than 40,000 cumulative community service miles.
"(The cheerleaders have) done community service all over the country ... and they don't just collect food items, they actually go to the locations of the disasters and deliver the items in person," Pulcrano said, adding, "All the community service that the girls do is strictly voluntary."
Dedication to community service has reached past individual cheerleaders and become part of the team's identity, Pulcrano said. "We've had girls who graduated 10, 15 years ago and they always talk about the community service and how it's affected their lives positively ... They never talk about (the championships they've won), they always talk about the community service trips."
