Sergeant Michael Strank: Iwo Jima's Oldest Flag Raiser

Franklin Borough in Cambria County was home to one of the most recognizable figures in American military history: Sergeant Michael Strank, the oldest and highest-ranking of the six Marines who raised the United States flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima on February twenty-third, nineteen forty-five. Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press photographed that moment, and the image became one of the most reproduced photographs in history, later serving as the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. Strank was born on November tenth, nineteen nineteen, in Czechoslovakia and grew up here in Franklin Borough after his family emigrated.

He did not survive to see the fame that photograph would bring: he was killed in action just six days after the flag raising, on March first, nineteen forty-five. He was reinterred at Arlington in nineteen forty-nine.