On the Friday, September 11, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast:
Thomas E. Franklin, former Bergen Record photographer, takes listeners inside the chaos and uncertainty of September 11, 2001. Speaking with Mike Kelly, a columnist for The Record in New Jersey and USA TODAY, he recalls navigating Ground Zero, documenting the aftermath of the attacks, and capturing the firefighter flag-raising image that came to symbolize resilience, patriotism, and remembrance.Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Michael Kelly:
The photographs of the 9/11 attacks are still seared in our memories 25 years later. There's a picture of a plane smashing into the towers. There's a picture of a firefighter rescuing a man out of the rubble, a picture of a stockbroker covered in ash. But one picture stands out over these years and still resonates with us today. And that's a picture of three firefighters, their faces streaked in sweat, their uniforms dusty, they're raising an American flag over the rubble. I'm Mike Kelly for The Excerpt. Tom Franklin, a photographer at that time with the Bergen Record in New Jersey, took that photograph. And Tom is here with us today to talk about taking that photograph and how it resonates all these years later. Hi, Tom. It's good to see you again.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Good to see you too, Mike.
Michael Kelly:
We were colleagues back then. We were actually together here on the site very briefly. We crossed the Hudson River separately, of course. What were you thinking as you walked into that rubble pile that day? Try to take me back to your thoughts as you saw it the first time.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Well, I really have to begin with how the day began for me, which was hearing about a plane crash into the World Trade Center.
Michael Kelly:
Sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
I was in the office in Hackensack. I attempted to drive into Manhattan, but when the second plane hit, the river crossings were closed. So I drove to Exchange Place in Jersey City, which is really just across the river.-
Michael Kelly:
That's where we met. Yeah, same thing. Yeah.
Thomas E. Franklin:
And that was the first time I saw you that day. But that scene was incredibly dramatic.
Michael Kelly:
Yes.
Thomas E. Franklin:
We had the towers in flames and smoke, the whole sky filled with smoke. And then of course, one tower fell and then the other tower fell. There were boats bringing the injured to triage center that they had set up there, all with this incredible backdrop of the World Trade Center no longer there. So I talked my way onto a boat in the early afternoon and I got from Exchange Place to what's now called Brookfield Place-
Michael Kelly:
Sure, right. Not far from where we're sitting. Sure. Yeah.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Yeah. So I got off the boat there and I spent the next several hours just wandering what we now call a Ground Zero area, photographing, search and rescue, looking for survivors, but also trying to capture the broad scope of the debris field, the damage and the unthinkable of those... The idea that those towers were no longer there and they were in this pile of rubble that I was now photographing and people were looking for survivors. It was almost too much to comprehend. It was really, I know the word surreal is used a lot, but it was a surreal scene. It was beyond belief that those towers were now below our feet.
Michael Kelly:
I remember that day and I felt a certain sense of not just that it was a surreal scene, but I had trouble really trying to imagine how this even happened. I remember the debris field was something like seven stories high. It was like nothing I've ever seen before. Yeah. Did you feel that same way?
Thomas E. Franklin:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, keep in mind that this was the days before social media, before phones could capture photographs-
Michael Kelly:
Sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
And be shared instantly with the world. So I did have a flip phone cellphone back then, but it wasn't working, right? The relay tower for Nextel, I believe was on top of the World Trade Center.
Michael Kelly:
That's right. That's right.
Thomas E. Franklin:
We had no cellular connection. So throughout that day, I really didn't have access to the information that the average person had. I hadn't seen those horrible images on television of the planes crashing into the building. I didn't see any of that. I only saw what was in front of me. And what I saw in front of me was this war zone, this debris field from the fallen towers, and a few search and rescue groups looking for survivors. I didn't see anybody rescued that day, but I was just really in stunned disbelief of the damage and the wreckage and the fact that the towers were no longer there.
Michael Kelly:
Were you scared at all as you were walking in this debris field? I remember being a little apprehensive. Yeah, frightened in some respects.
Thomas E. Franklin:
I wasn't scared for myself. And a funny moment that day was an exchange you and I had.
Michael Kelly:
Sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Funny is maybe not the right word, but a poignant moment where I expressed to you some concern about my brother who had worked at One Chase Plaza, and I knew he sometimes took the path train in from New Jersey. So I was kind of wondering about his whereabouts.
Michael Kelly:
Sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Again, I had no cellular service. I wasn't able to call my wife. I had a young child at home. I was worried about them who I knew they'd be worried about me. So those were the things that I was thinking about. When I got off the boat and I was photographing in the Ground Zero area, I wanted to stay out of the way of search and rescue.
Michael Kelly:
The firefighters and the police officers, sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Yeah. But I also wanted to get close and it was a challenge. I mean, I got threatened with being arrested a couple of times that day, including earlier that morning in Jersey City. When I saw you the second time that day, we were just north of the Ground Zero area, and I was within arm's length of the building I later came to know as World Trade Number 7.
Michael Kelly:
Correct. It was on fire.
Thomas E. Franklin:
I think the World Trade Center's two buildings, but it was a complex of buildings.
Michael Kelly:
Yeah.
Thomas E. Franklin:
And I was within an arm's length of that building photographing what I didn't know was on the other side, it was compromised. And I remembered a fireman grabbing me and saying, "You got to get out of here, and if I see you again, you're going to be arrested. Get out of here." And so I took that advice and I left and I went back to the marina and I came into the Ground Zero area under that overpass.
Michael Kelly:
So let me stop you because that firefighter telling you to get out of the way prompted you to walk to the spot where you eventually photographed the three firefighters raising the flag. Take me through that scene. What happened that time?
Thomas E. Franklin:
Yeah. After arriving on the boat, I had wandered around the whole area at least once, or at least as far as I could get. I could not get to the other side of the debris field without having to leave. And I didn't want to leave because I was on the inside.
Michael Kelly:
That's right.
Thomas E. Franklin:
And if I was on the outside, I might not get back to the inside.
Michael Kelly:
Correct.
Thomas E. Franklin:
So I wasn't going to wander too far. I had enough experience covering big events to know how these police scenes work, and I knew I had to shoot quickly and move quickly. And I also tried not to stay in the same spot too long, and I was trying not to draw attention to myself.
Michael Kelly:
And not get in the way.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Right.
Michael Kelly:
Yeah. But at the same time, capture the moment for historical purposes. Sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Exactly. And then sometime around I want to say maybe 4:30, someone had told me I had to leave because the search and rescue was going to stop because Trade Center Number 7 was going to fall.
Michael Kelly:
Correct.
Thomas E. Franklin:
And so everyone migrated to the southwest corner, right just beyond that overpass there.
Michael Kelly:
You're pointing to a corner of West Street and Liberty Street.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Correct. Exactly. The corner of Liberty and West Street, just west of West Street. So it was just past there. And it was solemn. It was like a wake. There were hundreds of people sitting there, a lot of firemen, a lot of people who were involved with the search and rescue.
Michael Kelly:
And you were also looking ahead, you had a deadline.
Thomas E. Franklin:
I did.
Michael Kelly:
This was old school journalism. We actually had a deadline for publication.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Sure. And wondering if I could even get back across the river. So this was about 4:30, 4:45, and then I saw these three firemen on a rise near that corner fumbling with a flag. And instinctively I said, "This is something I should go photograph." So I quickly moved in position. They were attaching this flag to an existing pole, and then they hoisted it up the flagpole and looking up as it went up. And it was a quick series of photographs. The actual flag going up the pole was about five frames. So when I saw the three firemen, I had to quickly make some photographer decisions. I wanted a long lens. So I either had the long lens on my camera or I put it on. I also wanted to stop down and get as shallow depth of field as I can get because I wanted the background to be background, to be less focused.
Michael Kelly:
So you were composing the picture in some respects, right?
Thomas E. Franklin:
Yes.
Michael Kelly:
Yeah. So you saw this as a... My point is I think you saw this for what it was. It was a meaningful moment.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Yeah. And these are decisions photographers make very quickly.
Michael Kelly:
Sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
I was a very experienced photographer at this point. So stopped down my lens, racked the focus out, the zoom out so I could get a little bit more of a telephoto look. Quickly got into position. And then the flag went up and the firemen briefly looked at it and then they started to come down. I saw another photographer run up and run right past the fireman up to that ledge. I did the same thing. I walked right past the firemen. I did not talk to them. I went up to the ledge that they had just been on and made some wide angle shots of the flag flopping in the wind with the little financial center in the background. I had very little space on my cards at this point, so I then climbed down. I think I shot whatever remaining photos I had, and then I went over to the riverfront to try and get myself back on a boat back to New Jersey.
Michael Kelly:
Couple of questions about the firefighters. How did they appear to you?
Thomas E. Franklin:
I can't really speak to the actions, the mood or the emotions of the firemen. When I photographed them, they had no idea I was taking their picture. The firemen were just the subjects of the picture. I didn't have the wherewithal to get more information from them. And people ask me all the time, "Did you know what you had?" And the answer is no. I had just photographed the two largest buildings in New York collapse. In my mind, there were tens of thousands of people buried under that rubble.
Michael Kelly:
Yeah, I know. It's graveyard.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Including people I knew had worked in those buildings.
Michael Kelly:
Sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
And I had photographed this war zone of a place that I was very familiar with that looked unrecognizable. So what the firemen were doing did not immediately stand out to me. I saw the symbolism of the flag and the similarity to Joe Rosenthal's photo from Iwo Jima, but beyond that, it didn't stand out from everything else I had photographed.
Michael Kelly:
So at that moment in time, you really did not have a sense of the largeness of this picture?
Thomas E. Franklin:
Not at all, Mike. I was too much in the moment. And as I mentioned, I didn't even have a full understanding of what happened that day. Had there been social media back then, it would've been very different.
Michael Kelly:
Perhaps, yeah. Yeah. I mean, keep in mind, we were in a communications bubble here. We couldn't call out. I remember I was using a payphone of all things. I'm not even sure those things exist anymore. Yeah.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Another photographer had gotten some cellular service at some point that day. I think it was while still back in Jersey City, and I said, "Look, you have got to call my boss at work and tell them I'm at Exchange Place. I'm making pictures. Somebody needs to call my wife and tell her I'm okay. I'm not in New York, and I'll be in touch as soon as I can." And within an hour or two of that conversation, I was on a boat, ferry boat coming to Manhattan.
Michael Kelly:
So let's talk about after you took the photograph, what did you do next?
Thomas E. Franklin:
After I took the flag raising photo, I was pretty much out of digital space. So I had gone to the waterfront where I had arrived by boat and I talked my way onto a boat. It took a while. There were not a lot of boats at this point taking anybody over, but I did get on a boat. I though they were going to take me to Exchange Place. They took me to Liberty State Park, which is a couple of miles from where I was parked. I made it to a parking lot and I stuck my thumb out and a kind woman picked me up. She had just dropped her Jersey City fireman husband off who was going to come and help with search and rescue. We told each other a little bit about our day, and she told me she had escaped Ground Zero.
Michael Kelly:
Sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
She had a gash in her leg. I remember we were both pretty emotional, crying a little bit, talking about what had happened, and she drove me all the way to my car.
Michael Kelly:
And then what happened?
Thomas E. Franklin:
Got in my car and I attempted to go back to our office in Hackensack. I didn't get there. Shortly when I got on Route 3, there was a police action and they weren't allowing... All traffic was stopped.
Michael Kelly:
Right. We think police were trying to search cars that day for suspected terrorists, that sort of thing.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Yeah, I learned that later. So again, I didn't have time for that. So I drove onto a grass divider. I got to a service road. I was able to get from the service road, get into a hotel. I believe it was a Radisson Hotel in Secaucus, and I asked the manager if I could transmit my pictures. I sat down in the lobby of this hotel and I was editing and transmitting my pictures in the order in which I had shot them. So early in the day, those pictures were going first. The flag raising was one of the last pictures I sent that day-
Michael Kelly:
Really?
Thomas E. Franklin:
Because it was one of the last pictures I shot. What's also interesting about that, Mike, is when I was sitting on the floor in this lobby of the hotel, I could see in the bar televisions and seeing those horrific images of planes crashing into the building.
Michael Kelly:
So you're seeing for the first time-
Thomas E. Franklin:
For the first time.
Michael Kelly:
The plane hitting the building, the building's coming down.
Thomas E. Franklin:
And it was horrifying. And at the same time, I was editing my pictures and a crowd of people started gathering around me as I was sitting on the floor editing and captioning my photos. Back in those days, it would take a couple of minutes to send one picture, sometimes as much as 10 minutes, depending on the internet connection, because in the days of dial-up. And so it took me several hours to transmit my pictures.
Michael Kelly:
And one of the last pictures you sent was the flag raising photograph.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Yeah.
Michael Kelly:
When you saw that photograph finally as you're editing it, for people who are not aware, editing means you're doing what to the picture? Putting a caption on it, perhaps cropping it a little bit, that sort of thing?
Thomas E. Franklin:
Yeah, good question. So when I say editing, I am sorting through the photos and separating-
Michael Kelly:
Deciding what to-
Thomas E. Franklin:
Picking the good ones. We as photo journalists, we shoot a large volume of photos.
Michael Kelly:
Sure, sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
I'm looking for the best of my photos, and then I didn't do any other editing. Typically, I would crop or maybe do a little color correction. I didn't do any of that. Didn't have time for it. I just typed my captions. Captions have to go into the metadata field before you transmit a picture. And so the selection and then captioning could take several minutes. Interestingly, my photos were really... Interesting, Mike, the photos were really dusty.
Michael Kelly:
Yeah.
Thomas E. Franklin:
I had so much dust inside my camera that day from changing lenses.
Michael Kelly:
Interesting. Wow.
Thomas E. Franklin:
They were really dusty. And Rich Jealy, my photo editor, recognized the historic significance of my photos, and he didn't want any of that dust removed. So if you look at the flag raising photo, in most reproductions, you can see the blotches of dust still there, and so they were not altered.
Michael Kelly:
Let me turn the page a little bit. You came back here recently to walk the area. You were writing an essay for a book that USA TODAY has produced. What was it like to return to this area?
Thomas E. Franklin:
To answer your question, when I come here now and I see how beautiful and how respectful this space is, I'm really moved. I really rarely come here without getting choked up or feeling an incredible feeling of solemnness. I feel very solemn when I come here. And then I think about all that we lost, and I think about those almost 3,000 people who died. And any conversation about 9/11, when you're talking about my photograph or something else related to 9/11, we can never lose sight of the fact that thousands of innocent people were murdered that day in the most horrific way possible. Many never had the chance to-
Michael Kelly:
Just doing ordinary things like going to work.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Just showed up for work.
Michael Kelly:
Sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
And those firemen, those brave firemen that had to enter those buildings to perform their jobs, to rescue people, knowing there was a good chance they weren't coming out.
Michael Kelly:
Now, you had a particular moment at the one-year anniversary. I wonder if you could share with me. You came here for the one-year anniversary as a photographer on assignment to cover that first anniversary. I remember I was with you. What was that particular moment where you realized that this was very personal for you?
Thomas E. Franklin:
I didn't cover a lot of the search and rescue after 9/11. I was really busy covering the story and then handling a lot of the publicity related to the flag raising photo, but I wanted to be here for the first anniversary. And so I had embedded with a group of bagpipers from Sunrise who have marched here, and then I followed them down into the pit, and down there I had photographed the first ceremony. And Mike, it was the most difficult assignment to photograph I've ever had.
Michael Kelly:
Really?
Thomas E. Franklin:
It was in many ways more difficult than 9/11 itself because you were surrounded by the family and friends of the loved ones who were lost.
Michael Kelly:
And it was still a construction pit. Yeah, yeah.
Thomas E. Franklin:
It was a pit, and it was windy that day.
Michael Kelly:
Yeah, it was.
Thomas E. Franklin:
And the wind was kicking up these rocks and it was pelting people. And Mike, it was just a really, really stark, emotional, painful, grief-filled scene. I struggled to make pictures through that. I remember shooting through tears. And I photographed this one family, and they were all wearing the same T-shirt. It said, "We love you, Jim," were white T-shirts. I photographed them from a distance, and they were memorable photographs. I learned later that Jim was James Brian Riley, and James Brian Riley went to my high school, all women high school in South Huntington, New York, and that really brought the story full circle for me.
I later learned, I had lots of friends in common, we had the same teachers, and I learned what a special person he was from my former teachers, and I've gotten to know his older sister a little bit, who was just a couple of grades behind me, and that really hit home. And every time I come to the Ground Zero area, whenever I come to the reflection pools, I make a point of looking for his name.
Michael Kelly:
Finding his name, yeah. Your picture of the firefighters still resonates all these years later. Why do you see this as so indicative and symbolic of what happened that day?
Thomas E. Franklin:
Yeah, the photos lived a life of its own, Mike.
Michael Kelly:
Sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
I mean, it's really about the relationship people have with looking at the photo, and here we are 25 years later, I still get emails, sometimes phone calls from people having nice things to say about the photo, how it means something to them.
Michael Kelly:
Right.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Right? It gives them a sense of patriotism, it gives them a sense of resilience. And so that's really meaningful, and I'm really proud of that and happy to have made an image that could bring about these feelings and emotions with people, but it remains a very bittersweet thing. People connect me with 9/11 through that photo, and I'm proud of that, but I remind them the photo represents thousands of people who are killed, and we can never lose sight of that.
Michael Kelly:
Sure.
Thomas E. Franklin:
I'm also proud of the fact that the photo was used on this postage stamp, which helped raise over $10 million for victims of 9/11. And to think about any work that we do that could raise money to help other people, especially victims of 9/11 or families that were damaged by 9/11, I think that's a really powerful thing.
Michael Kelly:
Well, it still lives today. Tom, thanks so much.
Thomas E. Franklin:
Thanks, Mike.
Michael Kelly:
This is really...
Thomas E. Franklin:
Thank you so much.
Michael Kelly:
I'm Mike Kelly, a columnist for The Record in New Jersey and the USA TODAY Network.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The story behind the firefighters' flag-raising at Ground Zero | The Excerpt
