Community Corner

Stolen Flag That Flew Over Ground Zero Returns Home

Flag was left on the doorstep of its Huntington Station home overnight.

Written by Ryan Bonner

I am so sorry. I had no idea. 

Those were the words written on a note that accompanied a neatly folded American flag that was left on a Huntington Station, N.Y. doorstep sometime overnight Thursday. 

The flag, which flew over Ground Zero following 9/11, had been stolen from a flagpole at the home of Melissa Ielpi-Brengel earlier this week. 

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Ielpi-Brengel's brother Jonathan Ielpi, a firefighter with FDNY Squad 288 in Queens, died on 9/11, and the flag was one of many given to 9/11 families to fly outside their homes between Memorial Day and July 4, and again on Sept. 11. 

“The flag is very special to me, and my family, not only because it is an American flag, but also because of where the flag once flew,” Ielpi-Brengel said after it was stolen. 

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Ielpi-Brengel had said she was spreading the word on the flag theft in the hopes that its special meaning would get back to the thief, which clearly it did. 

"I hope the person or people who took it learned some type of lesson through all of this and that they don't try to pull something like this again," Ielpi-Brengel told Patch on Friday.


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