Flag
Photo credit: Jin S. Lee
Dimensions (Metric): 7.62 cm X 12.7 cm
American flag with attached halyard. The flag is slightly dirty and the halyard is separated into four pieces.
On the late afternoon of September 11, 2001, FDNY Firefighter Dan McWilliams spotted a flag on a yacht—the Star of America, owned by Spiros Kopelakis and Shirley Dreifus—docked at a Hudson River marina near the World Trade Center site. McWilliams, along with FDNY Firefighters Billy Eisengrein and George Johnson, took the flag and part of its halyard. Together, they raised the flag on a tilted pole protruding from a 20-foot pile of debris near West Street. The flag-raising lifted the spirits of rescue workers and other responders at Ground Zero.
Several photographers captured the moment, including Thomas Franklin, a staff photographer at a New Jersey newspaper, The Bergen Record. Franklin’s photo, shot with a telephoto lens shortly after 5 p.m., was part of a sequence of images documenting the determined efforts of the responders to hoist the flag and appeared on the front-page issue of The Bergen Record the following day. The photo was also released to the Associated Press wire, which resulted in the picture’s publication in several international papers. In the atmosphere of resurgent patriotism following the 9/11 attacks, Franklin’s photo of the flag became iconic.
This flag became a symbol of resilience when three FDNY firefighters raised it at Ground Zero on the afternoon of September 11, 2001. The flag was removed that same evening. By the following day, a different American flag had been hoisted in its place. The whereabouts of the original flag remained a mystery for nearly 15 years.
In 2014, the History Channel aired an episode about the missing flag on Brad Meltzer’s Lost History. Soon thereafter, a former U.S. Marine turned in the flag to authorities in Everett, Washington. He explained that he had acquired it from someone connected to the widow of a Ground Zero rescue and recovery worker. Before watching the televised documentary, he had been unaware there was an ongoing search for the flag.
At the request of the Everett Police Department, the Washington State Crime Lab analyzed the flag’s fabric, nautical roping, metal hardware, attached electrical tape, and embedded dust particles to confirm its authenticity. Experts concluded that there is certainty up to 99 percent that this is the same flag depicted in the photographs from 9/11.
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