nmah5617.xml

nmah5617.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-08-29

I cant prove this.
We didnt have cameras to capture the moment. We didnt exchange phone numbers to keep in touch. We never even thought it might mean anything to anyone but us. In the end, I guess it doesnt. But its out there somewhere. And that means something to me.
On September 12, 2001, I was digging through rubble outside the American Express tower in Manhattan, in the shadow of the huge glass sphere from Windows on the World. Its hard to say if it was day or night, because the smoke and the dust and the halogen lamps were a constant thing. And the smell.
God, that smell. Concrete and meat, and stagnant water. It soaked into my gloves, my boots, my uniform.
The stink might have been lessened by the paper mask I had hanging around my neck, but it was too hot for that. A few guys kept them on, but most of us were too numb to care. Hell with it, I thought, I dont want to live forever. Not if I have to live in this world.
Then we found it.
Im tempted to say it was evening, because I remember thinking I was all cried out, and finding I was wrong.
Sifting through a pile of debris, one of the workers to my right stopped suddenly. Then he stood up straight, pulling with him the remains of an American flag.
Not the one you saw on the news. This was different. This was pure. In a way, Im glad there arent any photos of it, because it was ours. If you werent there that night, you didnt get to share it with us. Theres something to be said for that.
The flag was destroyed. I dont mean that it had a hole in it, or that the edges were frayed. It was torn apart. What was left was little more than a few red and white stripes. And one star.
He was a big guy, the guy who found it, and he had a big voice to match his frame. It was a real city voice; the voice of a steel worker, the voice of a longshoreman, of a teamster, a laborer, a bricklayer, a carpenter. As he raised the flag, and we all took a corner to hold it up for the rest to see, he shouted, Theres one star left. That star… that star is New York. Thats our star.
A cheer went up, and the tears I thought I had spent were there again, digging gullies through the dirt on my face. We hung the flag on a shattered marble wall with red tape, as high as we could reach. For the rest of the night we worked next to it, glancing up every once in a while to see that our star New Yorks star was still there.
The days to come were filled with photo-ops of firefighters raising their own flag, and a barrage of hero imagery and calls for war. It really became too much to take. Part of me wanted to be back there, surrounded by people who were more than just talking heads and well-wishers. When I found my way back to that spot a few weeks later, the red tape that had held the flag was still there, but the wall was blank. I sometimes wonder what happened to our star, and I can only hope that one of us who was there that night kept it, and that some day he can unfold it, and tell his version of this story, and show his grandchildren what it really means to be a New Yorker.
To the guy who found the flag, if youre reading this: I was the Marine who was standing next to you. And Ive never forgotten it. Your words and your love of your city and your country are part of me and everyone else who remembers that night, when a tiny white star broke through the death and destruction and, for a moment, made us all brothers.