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| Shirley Dreifus, the original owner of the American flag, left, that firefighters hoisted at ground zero in the hours after the 9/11 terror attacks, speaks during an interview at the Sept. 11 museum, Thursday Sept. 8, 2016, in New York. After disappearing for more than a decade, the 3-foot-by-5-foot flag goes on display Thursday at the museum. |
NEW YORK
(AP) -- An American flag raised at ground zero on Sept. 11 in a
defining moment of patriotic resolve took its place at the site Thursday
after disappearing for over a decade.
The
3-foot-by-5-foot flag took a symbolic and curious journey from a yacht
moored in lower Manhattan to the smoking wreckage of the World Trade
Center, then to a firehouse about 2,400 miles away in Everett,
Washington - and now to a glass case at the National Sept. 11 Museum. A
TV show, a mysterious man and two years of detective work helped
re-establish its whereabouts.
"In a museum
that's filled with such deeply powerful artifacts, this newest of
artifacts is certainly one of the most emotionally and historically
powerful," museum President Joe Daniels said as the display was unveiled
Thursday, three days before the 15th anniversary of the terror attacks.
The flag's absence, he said, "just felt like a hole in the history of this site."
The
flag is the centerpiece of one of the most resonant images of American
fortitude on 9/11. After plucking the flag from a nearby boat, three
firefighters hoisted it amid the ashen destruction as photographer
Thomas E. Franklin of The Record of Hackensack, New Jersey, captured the
scene. The Pulitzer Prize-winning picture inspired a postage stamp,
sculpture and other tributes.
Meanwhile, the
flag was signed by New York's governor and two mayors and flown at
Yankee Stadium, outside City Hall and on an aircraft carrier near
Afghanistan - except it wasn't the right flag. It was bigger, and by
2004, the yacht's owners had publicly broached the error.
By then, officials had no idea what had happened to the real flag.
They
were in the dark until November 2014, when a man turned up at an
Everett fire station with what is now the museum's flag, saying he'd
seen a recent History channel piece about the mystery, according to
Everett Police Detective Mike Atwood and his former colleague Jim
Massingale.
The man, who gave firefighters
only the name "Brian," said he'd gotten it as a gift from an unnamed
National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration worker who'd gotten it
from an unidentified 9/11 widow.
The
detectives gathered surveillance video and circulated a police sketch,
but they haven't found the man or been able to confirm his explanation
of the flag's provenance. DNA tests of material found on electrical tape
wrapped around the flag's halyard didn't match the firefighters or
other people known to have handled the flag.
But
a forensic expert analyzed dust on the flag and halyard and found it
consistent with ground zero debris. Meanwhile, the detectives
scrutinized photos and videos of the flag-raising and consulted one of
the yacht's former crew members to compare the flag's size, material,
stitching, hardware and halyard.
Taking all
the evidence together, "we feel it's very likely the one captured in the
photo," said Massingale, now with the Stillaguamish Police Department
on the Stillaguamish Tribe's reservation in Washington.
The
yacht's owners, Shirley Dreifus and the late Spiros E. Kopelakis, were
so surprised when first told the flag might have resurfaced that
Kopelakis wondered whether the call was a prank, Dreifus said. She and
Chubb insurance donated the flag to the museum.
A documentary about the flag's recovery airs Sunday on History.
