9/11 Memorial Flag Stops in Easton

The 9/11 Memorial Flag has traveled the country, gone overseas and been viewed by 6 million people.

Add to that number several dozen who welcomed it to Easton's Sigal Museum Tuesday, plus the visitors the museum hopes will come to view the flag over the next 30 days.

The flag arrived Tuesday afternoon with a quiet ceremony, with a group of police officers, firefighters and military personnel threading a long metal pole through the top of the fabric in order to hoist the 22-foot by 32-foot patchwork cloth.

The ceremony offered a "dichotomy of emotion," Rev. Michael Dowd said in offering an invocation.

On one hand, the flag was a reminder of nearly "3,000 dreams that will never be realized."

"But we also come here with a sense of being renewed," Dowd added, "that we can be build upon the work of all the people in this nation."

The flag was created by volunteers from Bucks County and Hunterdon County in New Jersey, and first presented to New York in 2002.

"People wanted to do something," after the attacks, said Tom O'Brien, keeper of the flag. "They didn't know what to do. Sewing was something of an answer, and their hearts dug in."

The flag is made up of nearly 3,000 smaller flags representing the Sept. 11 victims, as well as flags representing service organizations and countries that lost people that day.

The flag will remain on display until Sept. 20, and is free to view with general museum admission.

Admission will be free on September 11, thanks to support from the Brown Lynch American Legion Post 9 and Embassy Bank.