FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - "Every Soldier, Airman, Marine and Sailor has a special relationship with the flag," said Brig. Gen. Ferdinand Irizarry II, deputy commanding general of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. "We wear the American flag everywhere we go. We wear it on our uniforms and we carry it into combat. And it's the flag that also covers our caskets for those who make the ultimate sacrifice."
Irizarry followed veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm in threading a symbolic stitch into a 20 by 30 foot American flag which flew above 90 West St. directly south of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
The flag, now known as the National 9/11 Flag, was out on display at the Airborne and Special Operations Museum, April 6, for the Fayetteville community to be a part of a stitch of history. Not only did the veterans get to stitch the flag, visitors of the ASOM also got to thread their story into the flag as well.
Jeff Parness, founder of the New York Says Thank You Foundation, explained that the days that followed Sept. 11, 2001, the flag began to fade and fray due to the ashes of Ground Zero and the weather elements. It was removed about a month after the trade center towers fell.
Parness said that the superintendent of the cleanup crew kept the flag at his home in Pennsylvania until 2008, when he went to Greensburg, Kan., with the foundation to help rebuild the city after it was hit by a severe tornado.
"All the little old ladies of the senior citizens center in Greensburg, Kansas, stitched this flag back together," Parness told the crowd. "Where pieces of the original flag were missing, on their own, they decided to stitch in American flags that had survived the tornado. They literally stitched together history."
In the months that followed, more pieces were added, incorporating a patch from every state. Each patch has it's own story. Veterans; Pentagon survivors; Fort Hood, Texas survivors; students from Columbine High School, Colo.; survivors of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; survivors of the Tuscan, Ariz., shooting; Navajo Code Talkers from World War II; Hurricane Katrina survivors; former U.S. prisoners of war and many more passed their stories along as they sewed patches into the flag.
At first, the hodge-podge flag can be distracting to the viewer's eye. But when you hear the stories and know that parts of the original Star Spangle banner, the flag that flew in the Pennsylvania field where U.S. Airways Flight 93 went down, and even a blue thread from the flag that covered President Abraham Lincoln's body after his assassination, are part of the National 9/11 Flag, the viewer will understand the true meaning of the flag.
"This will forever be a monument to the strength of the American people," Parness said. "We wanted to make a statement, that 9/11 didn't just happen in New York or the Pentagon or a field in Pennsylvania. It happened in America ... It's not really about 9/11, but it's really about 9/12. The day after, when Americans came together to rebuild -- to help each other. It's about compassion."
Eight-year-old Hope Bartlinski, who wasn't even alive the day the terrorist attacks happened, knew she would forever be a part of the flag's story and American history.
"Everyone is going to see it and know we were a part of making it -- 9/11 was a very important date and we shouldn't forget," Bartlinski said.
Bartlinski's sister and brother also had the opportunity to sew in a stitch that connected a patch sewn in by a veterans' organization in Branson, Mo., and a patch that veterans stitched on Veterans' Day in St. Louis.
The flag has a few more trips to make before becoming a featured artifact at the National September 11 Memorial Museum, which is still under construction at the World Trade Center site.
For more information about the National 9/11 Flag, please visit, National911Flag.org.
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