Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani signs American flag for Cuyahoga Falls students

CLEVELAND - The moving picture of his face behind a mask to filter the air he breathed is probably etched in the memory banks of millions of Americans.  Throughout the world images were flashed of then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani leading the rescue and recovery efforts at the World Trade Center after terrorists crashed jetliners into the two skyscrapers.

Giuliani, part of a Cleveland seminar entitled "Get Motivated" took time to sign a special American flag a sixth-grade teacher from suburban Cuyahoga Falls brought for him to see.

The flag originated in New York, when firefighters in that city, at the request of Lori Jordan's students at Roberts Middle School asked them a haunting question.   What happened to the flag New York firefighters raised over the rubble of the destroyed World Trade Center was the question the students asked.

Firefighters responded with this answer:  The flag was flown over a U.S. aircraft carrier which was sent to the Middle East as part of the war on terror.  From there, the flag disappeared.

The firefighters sent another flag to the students at Roberts School, but not before firefighters from one of the stations which responded to 9-11 put their signatures on the white stripes of Old Glory.

Jordan was so impressed; she decided to teach a course on 9/11, telling the sixth-grade students about the tragedy, which had occurred in New York, at the Pentagon in suburban Washington D.C., and in a meadow near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 

When she heard Giuliani was to speak at the seminar, she brought the flag to Quicken Loans Arena, scene of the seminar.  Giuliani consented to meet with her.

"That guy just stepped up, so obviously stepped, that he came to represent the tenacity of America," said Jordan, as she posed for photographs with Giuliani and another teacher who accompanied her from the school.

"Thank the children very much for doing this," said Giuliani, as he signed the flag, adding his name to the names of New York firefighters who had sent the flag to the children.

Giuliani called the 9/11 terrorist attack an important subject that must be taught to children once the children are old enough to understand its significance and its ramifications.  

"It isn't to frighten the children," said the former mayor of New York who later was a Republican candidate for president.  "It's not to give them bad thoughts or anything else," he said.  "It's teaching them our history and it's teaching them our present."