Verona resident Franca Tanelli has made many important flags in the 34 years she has spent at Annin Flag. But none have caught the nation’s spirit as much as the battered banner that was in Tanelli’s hands yesterday. Annin, recently rebranded Annin Flagmakers, is repairing a giant flag found near Ground Zero in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The National 9/11 Flag, as it has come to be known, was in pretty sorry shape when in was taken down a month after the attacks. It has been patched many times over the ensuing years. But Tanelli and the three seamstresses who are working alongside her have been charged with the arduous task of restoring the flag to something close to its original glory. The women will be stitching back in a newly discovered field of stars that belongs to the flag, replacing a missing stripe and closing large gaps, and in so doing healing a flag that has brought a spirit of healing to many around the United States.
Annin is not normally in the flag repair business, but as it became aware of the work of the New York Says Thank You Foundation–the flag’s caretaker–it became committed to helping out. “It is the right thing to do,” says Robert R. Caggiano, an Annin vice president. “The ladies are so proud to be doing this work.” In addition to Tanelli, the seamstresses include her sister-in-law, Incoronata DiIorio, who is also from Italy; Taiwanese immigrant Lien Hao Hsien and Ahillia Harnandan, who is a native of Guyana.
Annin expects that the repair work will take many months to complete, in large part because the ladies will have to tailor their work around the heavy travel schedule of the National 9/11 Flag. It has been brought to the site of many tragedies around the country, from Greensburg, Kansas after its destruction by a tornado, to Tucson, Arizona, where it was displayed last month at the funeral of Christina Taylor-Green, who was killed in the January 8 assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. It will soon be sent to Shanksville, Pa., where one of the planes hijacked on 9/11 was crashed by its passengers.
“As Jeff Parness, the founder of the New York Says Thank You Foundation, has said,” notes Caggiano, “this flag is not about 9/11. It is about 9/12, the day America began healing.”
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