Evening of September 11, 2001. In the Oval Office, President George W. Bush sat down to speak to the country.

That morning he had been in Sarasota, Florida, at Emma E. Booker Elementary School. He was listening to second graders finish a reading lesson when an aide told him America was under attack. He stayed through the end of the lesson so the children would not be alarmed, then stepped into another classroom to face what had happened.

Four commercial airliners had been hijacked. Two struck the World Trade Center in New York. One struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth, United Flight 93, crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought the hijackers for control of the plane. The 9/11 Commission later wrote that those hijackers meant to hit a symbol of the American republic: the Capitol or the White House.

Bush left Florida on Air Force One. He stopped at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, then insisted on coming home. That evening he returned to the White House. At 8:30 p.m. Eastern, he addressed the nation from the Oval Office.

"These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve," he said.

Nearly three thousand people died that day. On December 18, 2001, Congress approved Public Law 107-89 and named September 11 Patriot Day. The law asks every department of the United States to fly the American flag at half-staff, and asks the people of the United States for a moment of silence.

Twenty-five years later, that is still what the flag does over the White House on this date.

Our 2025 White House Heritage Collection ornament is the Oval Office itself, finished in 24k gold on brass, made in America, with the history card that walks the room from Taft to the Resolute Desk.

See the 2025 Oval Office ornament. Collect the rest of the White House Heritage Collection.