AIKEN --- Rick Doran walked through the rubble of the World Trade Center and has been credited with hoisting the first American flag after the terrorist attacks.

He also carried the torch for the most recent Olympic Games in honor of the fallen firefighters of Sept. 11, 2001.

Now, the 23-year veteran New York firefighter is retiring from a job he has loved, and he and his wife, Gail, are moving to a city that they say has plenty of appeal -- Aiken.

"My wife fell in love with the place, as did I," he said of the city, recently named among this year's Top 20 Places to Thrive, according to the Web site bestboomertowns.com. "We've been down there many times now, and the people of Aiken are just incredible."

Mr. Doran said his decision to retire came about because his knees no longer allow him to be as flexible as he would like when fighting fires.

His wife also is nearing retirement as a schoolteacher.

After researching a long list of places, Mr. Doran said he and his wife looked no farther after finding Aiken.

Mr. Doran is having a home built in Woodside Plantation, and it could be completed by the middle of October.

They plan to rent a place as it's built, allowing them to move to Aiken by late July or August.

Pictures of Mr. Doran hoisting the flag at ground zero landed him on the cover of Time for an issue commemorating Sept. 11, 2001.

Since then, he has been a torch bearer for the Olympics, and he has become friends with Olympic gold medal winner and beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh, who carried the torch with him.

Mr. Doran's story is one that dramatically changed with the Twin Tower attacks. That morning, the veteran firefighter was at home, about 52 miles from work. He was reading a book when a friend from his fire company, Rescue No. 4, called and told him to turn on the TV.

Immediately, Mr. Doran left to help. As he and other firefighters neared the city, he said, they were held up at the midtown tunnel where a worker wasn't letting people go through.

Ultimately, they were allowed to pass.

Mr. Doran says that five-minute delay might have saved his life because the second building went down soon after.

"We got caught in the cloud," he said. "We could see it going down."

Mr. Doran was helping rescue efforts when, he said, he was approached by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who asked him to put up an American flag.

Mr. Doran climbed about seven stories of debris to get to a good spot. A crowd of rescuers below began cheering as he hoisted the flag on a broom stick.

"It just got overwhelming," he said of the moment.

Flash forward to the Beijing Olympics. Mr. Doran said he became a torch bearer through San Francisco after being chosen in a contest.

He said the contest asked why cell phones are important. He told a story about how at ground zero, many cell phones were found near victims' remains and were used to help identify them.

After being selected, Mr. Doran agreed to carry the torch with one condition: that he be allowed to take exactly 343 steps, one for every firefighter who died on Sept. 11. Ms. Walsh helped Mr. Doran with the task, adding her steps with Mr. Doran's to reach the goal.

Mr. Doran said he still keeps in touch with Ms. Walsh.

Although Mr. Doran is getting out of firefighting, his son, Mark, is continuing the tradition.

Mark Doran had his own brush with disaster, working for the fire department in Charleston when a disastrous blaze claimed the most firefighter lives since Sept. 11.

Mark Doran had originally been scheduled to work when nine firefighters died a year-and-a-half ago battling a Charleston warehouse fire. Instead, his schedule had been changed so he could have eye surgery.

"He would have absolutely been one of those," Rick Doran said.

Mr. Doran said he and his son have thought about how they were spared.

And now, his son is taking a firefighting job back in New York, where Mr. Doran said "he can make his own footprints."

"Now he's up here, and we'll be going down there," Mr. Doran said with a chuckle.