Every time Erin Musser sees a firefighter cry on television, she feels a pang inside.
"It just kills you. It makes you really angry," said Musser, 34, of Beacon Hill.
She and her husband, Nick, put their flag out on the porch a few hours after they watched the second plane crash into the World Trade Center.
"I have MS, so I can't give blood, so I have to do something," Musser said. "We just decided we needed to do that."
She's always considered herself patriotic, but "this just brings it right to the center stage."
"When I saw Congress singing 'God Bless America,' oh, my gosh, I just completely lost it," she said, with the television news blaring in the background. "It just brings me to tears."