Rockland pilot brings flag to New York City

ROCKLAND – Pilot Steve Morrison had no fears about flying his small airplane down the Hudson River on Sept. 8 to bring the Maine state flag to New York City.

The fact that two airplanes piloted by terrorists slammed into the World Trade Center towers didn’t shake Morrison’s confidence in flying. After all, it’s the way he relaxes.

“I wasn’t directly affected by it,” he said of the terrorist attack, and it did not deter him from wanting to fly again – right away.

In a flying procession on Sept. 8, part of a program called Flight Across America, pilots brought their state flags to the Big Apple to honor the people who lost their lives on Sept. 11 and to revive the spirit of flying in this country.

The plan was to present the flags to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg during a ceremony on board the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, which is now a sea, air and space museum in Manhattan.

Morrison, who is also an accomplished photographer, said it was the media images that had an impact on him, but the attacks have not affected his day-to-day life.

Each time news broadcasts replay the film footage taken of the planes hitting the towering buildings, “you remember where you were, and the feeling of what you felt then comes back,” he said.

When Morrison first saw the plane crashes on television, he felt “disbelief, sorrow, anger,” he said.

The Sept. 11 attacks were so close, he said, that, unlike the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, in which Americans at home “only got to hear it, we got to see it,” he said. “The impact was more profound. It was put before the American people so graphically.”

Morrison’s wife, Debbie Morrison, has no hesitations about her husband’s flying to New York, or anywhere, she said. “It could have happened in any way [such as] by car,” she said of the terrorist acts.

Debbie Morrison said she is extremely proud of her husband’s representing the state of Maine. The Sept. 11 events have made her “feel a lot stronger about patriotism,” she said.

“If terrorism wins on any level, we all lose,” Morrison said.