Iconic 9/11 flag, missing for years, returns to New York City

The insurer, an ardent supporter of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, is proud to donate the flag to the museum.

Shortly after three NY firefighters raised an American flag above the ruins left by the September 11 attacks – a moment captured in an iconic photo seen around the world – the flag disappeared. On Oct. 31, 2014, the show featured the missing flag.

Several hours later, when the dust began to settle, three firefighters – George Johnson, Billy Eisengrein, and Dan McWilliams – raised an American flag above the wreckage.

Four days after the October 31, 2014, airing of the episode, a man popped up at the Everett Fire Station with the flag in a plastic bag, the Times reported. “And I realized the same assemblage of particle types were found on the flag as the 9/11 ground zero dust”, Schneck added. Located on eight of the 16 acres of the World Trade Center site, the Memorial and Museum remember and honor the 2,983 people who were killed in the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993. “I am just so happy the flag is back where it belongs”.

“The raising of this American flag was a powerful symbol of hope, strength, and resilience at one of the most trying moments in our nation’s history”, said Greenberg.

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.

Eventually, a flag believed to be the Ground Zero artifact from Franklin’s photo toured the world, showing up at benefit concerts and aboard military ships en route to war. A widow of a 9/11 victim is said to have given the flag to a worker at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who in turn gave the flag to “Brian”, the Times reported.

Brian disappeared after handing in the flag, and attempts by Everett detectives to find him proved fruitless.

A documentary about the flag’s recovery airs Sunday on History.

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. It did not match the DNA of any of the firefighters who hoisted the flag, nor of the owners and crew of the yacht from which the flag had been taken.