A Country and Community United

Me with an Amana hand-crafted flag box

As we look to the past and all that’s changed since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, we can each remember exactly where we were when we heard and how we each coped with the event.  Although the Amana Colonies are hundreds of miles from Ground Zero, we found our own special way to pay tribute to those who lost their lives and preserve a piece of history from one of America’s darkest hours.

The Amana Furniture & Clock Shop builds wooden American flag display boxes used to display the flag in the traditional triangular fold.  These walnut and oak boxes show off the American flag at its best.

When visiting the Amana Furn-
iture & Clock Shop, be sure to see
the display about the entire flag box
project in the workshop viewing area.

Following 9/11, Glenn Pauly, a firefighter from Iowa City, invited a few firefighters from the New York City Fire Department he knew to visit eastern Iowa.  As a thank you present, the firefighters gave Pauly one of the American flags that had once hung from the north tower and was recovered following the building’s collapse.  To best showcase his gift, he decided to call the Amana Furniture Shop and get a custom-made flag box to best display the flag. 

The flag from the World Trade Center was 20 feet high and 30 feet wide and weighed 40 pounds!  The flag was twice as big as a normal flag the Amana flag box is designed to hold.  So they built a much larger box, measuring 51 inches wide and 30 inches high, to honor the flag pulled from the rubble.

Today the flag and flag box are on display in a memorial in New York City and remind us that we remain a country united, despite living great distances apart.