"I knew he was going to put the flag somewhere"

As the story goes, McWilliams, who had grown up with Eisengrein on Staten Island, found the flag on a 130-foot yacht in the Hudson named “Star of America,” owned by Shirley Dreifus of the Majestic Star Co. in New York. As soon as Eisengrein saw McWilliams, he said, “I knew he was going to put the flag somewhere.”

He hollered out, “Do you need help?” then joined them in looking for a place to hang it.

A couple minutes later, they discovered a construction trailer on the northwest corner of Liberty and West, with a big flagpole leaning against it.

“So we put a piece of tin on the ground up to the trailer and hiked up that, and raised it,” Eisengrein said.