With the Freeport Flag Ladies, 9/11/2019

This past Wednesday, September 11th, Eileen and I were in Freeport, ME, standing an hour in the rain for the farewell watch of the great Freeport Flag Ladies. The three ladies — Carmen Footer, Elaine Greene, and JoAnn Miller — stood on their Main Street corner every Tuesday, for 18 years, commemorating 9/11.

Eighteen years ago, September 11th was a blue sky, crisp, sunny day. Living in Dixmont, my morning on 9/11/2001 was routine, with me going about my business. Nothing special.

Our phone rang. It was a friend calling from Connecticut to tell us to turn on our TV. A plane, she said, hit one of the towers at the World Trade Center.

Scott K. Fish

Sure enough, the live TV feed showed black smoke pouring from the one tower. While trying with the rest of the country to make sense of what had happened, I was still watching live TV when terrorists crashed a second airliner into the other tower. And not long after, we were watching TV news when the Pentagon was also hit by an airliner, and there were reports of a passenger airliner nosediving and disintegrating into a Pennsylvania field.

Soon after, I was driving at night in New York State just below the Danbury, CT borderline. Passing train stations along Route 684, long after the commuter train peaks were over, their lighted parking lots still had cars parked here and there. There were news stories of people killed in the World Trade Centers identified only because they never rode the train back to the station to get in their cars to go home.

Were the owners of the cars parked under the train station lamp posts coming back? I wondered.

Years after 9/11/01, attending a funeral in Babylon, NY on Long Island, my conversation with the funeral director came around to 9/11. “We did a lot of funerals where there were no bodies,” the director told me.

Those unexpected details made a deep impression. They’ve stayed with me.

Eileen and I parked in a municipal lot behind LL Bean and walked to Main Street. Rain notwithstanding there was a sizable crowd standing on the sidewalks on both sides of the street, with the number of people increasing while we were there. Almost everyone held American flags of one size or another.

The crowd was made up of all kinds of people, all ages. Some held umbrellas; others wore raincoats, ponchos, hats. Some, like the Kora Shriners attending, stood unprotected from the rain, in white short-sleeve shirts, dark slacks, red neckties, and maroon Shriner hats.

Former Governor and First Lady Paul and Ann LePage were there, just two people in the rain in solidarity with the Freeport Flag Ladies and their well-wishers.

Cars, trucks, buses, vans, motorcycles all drove up and down Main Street, most tooting their horns and waving.

The Freeport Flag Ladies arrived at 8:00 a.m. They were hidden by the crowd from our view, but we heard the crowd applauding.

Freeport Flag Ladies founder Elaine, wearing a bright red jacket and American flag gloves, shook hands and thanked every individual who turned out this day.

The rain fell harder and then stopped. I couldn’t shake my sadness — which surprised me. Sept. 11 will always be a sad day — at least for those of us who were alive at the time. As gratifying as it was seeing all these people together in the rain to say thank you — the mood was somber.

Maine will forever talk about how every day, for 18 years, the Freeport Flag Ladies were a symbol, a reminder, of the true spirit of Maine and America, triumphant after the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.

As Elaine told a TV reporter, “You can either bring a light into the room, or walk into a room that’s dark and keep it dark. I prefer to bring a light into the room.”

God bless them.

Scott K. Fish has served as a communications staffer for Maine Senate and House Republican caucuses, and was communications director for Senate President Kevin Raye. He founded and edited AsMaineGoes.com and served as director of communications/public relations for Maine’s Department of Corrections until 2015. He is now using his communications skills to serve clients in the private sector.