"Patriot Flag" Touring Nation Flies in Morton Grove

The Civic Center will host a different kind of anniversary event Tuesday, and the gathering will take place in the parking lot.

The Patriot Flag, measuring 30 feet by 55.5 feet, will be flown from a Morton Grove Fire Department ladder fire truck today from 1 p.m., culminating in a ceremony at 6 p.m. The flag is being flown in all 50 states in a tour leading up to 9/11’s 10th anniversary.

The Patriot Flag is a tribute to the armed forces, first and second responders and the fallen and their families from 9/11, according a website set up for the program by World Memorial, the organization running the program. The program is also a tribute to active public safety personnel and armed forces.

Morton Grove Fire Department Chief Tom Friel said the department got involved with the Patriot Flag memorial program when John Slater of Morton Grove American Legion Post 134 approached him with the idea. The Fire Department coordinated events with the American Legion on each of the 9/11 anniversaries, he said.

Friel said on the first anniversary in 2002, 9/11 was high in people’s minds and in the public consciousness, and the Patriot Flag program is an effort to bring back a recollection of that. Friel said he hoped the flag continues to attract an increasing amount of attention as it makes its way across the country, eventually flying in Shanksville, Penn., the Pentagon and at Ground Zero in New York on Sept. 11. 

“And when that thing flies at the three locations, we’ll know Morton Grove has done a small part,” Friel said.

Retired New York Fire Department Lieutenant Joe Torrillo is a 9/11 survivor and an official spokesman for the Patriot Flag. Torrillo is a motivational speaker and Ground Zero tour guide. He donates his services to the Patriot Flag program because its mission statement aligns with his own.

“The mission statement of that flag is what I intended to do when I was found barely alive, and I was dug out from underneath the South Tower, and then placed in a boat and caught in the collapse of the second tower,” Torrillo said.

Torrillo said he was declared dead on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, until he was found in an operating room in New Jersey, he said.

“I was a 25-year fire lieutenant with the New York City Fire Department, and I promised myself if I came out from underneath that building, I would live the rest of my life trying to make this country the re-United States of America,” Torrillo said. “And that’s what that flag symbolizes, our effort to do just that so that we leave this country a better one than the one we inherited, for our children and our grandchildren.”

Torrillo said it was important to teach our children to love their country, regardless of how anybody else feels, or what their ideas and intentions are.

“This is all about the love of the United States and the American people,” Torrillo said. “There’s no political agendas, nothing surrounds that flag.”

The Patriot Flag program, made possible solely by volunteers and donations, began as an idea conceived at a World War II veteran Alex Kapitanski’s funeral in February 2010, according to the Patriot Flag’s website. Kapitanski was known as The West Coast Flag Man, reportedly raising and lowering the American flag more than 120,000 times during his lifetime.

The Patriot Flag was donated by the Escondido Auto Park Association in California to be flown at Kapitanski’s funeral. A small group of people including representatives from World Memorial and the local American Legion post began discussing what else could be done with the flag, and eventually arrived at the notion to send it to all 50 states leading up to the 10th anniversary of 9/11. FedEx agreed to sponsor the program with shipping services, and the Patriot Flag program has been traveling across country ever since.

Friel said the Patriot Flag would be flown at the Morton Grove Civic Center from 1 p.m. until 6 p.m., schedule and weather permitting. Citizens are encouraged to stop by and see it throughout the day, he said.

The Patriot Flag is scheduled to be flown in Chicago on June 14, in Orland Park and Joliet on June 15, in Skokie on June 16 and in Marseilles and Springfield on June 19, according to the Patriot Flag’s website.