New York Says Thank You Foundation Donates Ground Zero Flag to 9/11 Museum

Jeff Parness the founder of the New York Says Thank You Foundation is donating the 20-foot-by-30-foot flag recovered from Ground Zero, now known as the National 9/11 Flag, to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

The foundation's spokesman David Vermillion says, the flag will first embark on a two-year tour, people from different areas of the country will help restore it to its original 13-stripe format, using pieces from retired flags.

From the New York Says Thank You Foundation site:

Destroyed in the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11 and stitched back together seven years later by tornado survivors in Greensburg, Kansas, The National 9/11 Flag is a living testament to the resilience and compassion of the American people.

The story of the flag's recovery at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks and subsequent journey is retold on DNA info, a site for local Manhattan news:

Recovery workers first spotted what is now known as the National 9/11 Flag at dawn on Sept. 12, 2001, hanging from scaffolding on the heavily damaged 90 West St., unsecured and whipping in the wind.

"It became a focus for a lot of us," said Charles Vitchers, now 51, who was general superintendent for Bovis Lend Lease during the Ground Zero cleanup.

"We kept looking at it every day. It kept getting more and more shredded up. It was always on everybody's mind that we needed to go up and take it down."

Vitchers had to wait until the end of October 2001, when 90 West St. was stabilized, before he could send a crew of workers after the 20-foot-by-30-foot flag. Nearly half of the original fabric was gone, and the rest was faded and threadbare. Vitchers put the shreds in a black plastic bag in his shed, intending to organize a flag retirement ceremony.

But the flag sat untouched for seven years, until Vitchers met Parness, who was looking for a 9/11 artifact to take on a New York Says Thank You rebuilding trip to Greensburg, Kansas, in 2008, following the town's devastation by a tornado the year before.

Vitchers gave the flag's remains to Parness, who brought it to Greensburg's senior citizens' center. While Parness and his fellow volunteers built Greensburg a new 14,000-square-foot barn, women at the senior center took nine flags recovered from their town and used them to reinforce the damaged flag from New York.

The rest as they say is history.

The mission of The New York Says Thank You Foundation is to send volunteers from New York City each year on the 9/11 anniversary to help rebuild communities around the country affected by natural or man-made disasters as our way of commemorating the extraordinary love and generosity extended to New Yorkers by Americans from all across the United States in the days, weeks, and months following 9/11.

Click here to read about the beginning of the New York Says Thank You Foundation

Click here to view the touching documentary trailer, From Ground Zero to a Towering Nation.

After the 50-state two year tour, the donated National 9/11 Flag recovered from Ground Zero will become part of the September 11 Museum's permanent collection.

Sources: embedded in content