HONORS program brought banner to Boaz
By DONNA THORNTON, Editor
No symbol of this nation is more recognizable than the Stars and Stripes.
Despite its evolution over the decades to reflect the evolution of the country, the stars on a field of blue, with red and white bars representing the founding 13 colonies — waved in celebrations, lowered as we mourn, planted on the moon and made solemn tokens of soldiers service when their tour on this earth ends — are a constant.
Some flags, however, are unique, and on July 16, 2013, the Boaz VFW Post played host to one, revived from disaster, woven and repaired with bits of flags from the nation’s history, by the hands of people from across the country, from all walks of life, who’ve helped to make that history.
The occasion was the kick-off of the HONORS – Housing Our Nation’s Outstanding Returning Soldiers — program’s work to build an adaptive home for Sardis City native Corey Garmon, who was seriously injured while serving as a cavalry scout in Afghanistan. With contributions from businesses in the community, the program Charles Vickers helped found selected Garmon as the first soldier to receive an adaptive home.
Vickers served as superintendent of the clean up at Ground Zero, according to material provided at the event, where a 30-foot flag was rescued from the site of the devastation of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers.
That flag was brought to Boaz and displayed on that July evening, just one stop on a journey across the country. In 2003, according to the National Independent Flag Dealers Association, the New York Says Thank You Foundation became custodians of the National 9/11 Flag, and a project to restore the tattered flag began.
It first went to Greensburg, Kansas, where it was stitched back together by tornado survivors in 2008. Over the years, the foundation brought the flag on a 50-state journey as more than 30,000 people in local communities nationwide helped with the historic task of stitching it back to its original 13-stripe design using retired American flags in all 50 states.
Survivors of Hurricane Katrina, the shootings at Fort Hood and Columbine and the bombing at Oklahoma City took part, as did veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, members of Martin Luther King Jr.’s family, 20 members of Congress and everyday service heroes from across the nation.
On President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, a piece of the flag lain over Lincoln after he was shot at Ford’s Theater was stitched into the flag. It was presented as the official flag for the Kentucky Derby in 2011, and on the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, some 1,067 survivors of a tornado in Joplin, Missouri, earlier in the year sewed the final restorative patches into the flag.
On Flag Day 2012, threads from the original Star-Spangled Banner flag that flew at Fort McHenry and inspired the writing of the national anthem were stitched into the National 9/11 Flag.
After the stop in Boaz, Garmon said he’d been invited to participate when the flag is taken to California so that flags or threads from flags carried by Navy SEAL Team 6 could be added. After that, the flag was bound for the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, where it is displayed today.
The stop in Boaz was a part of the recognition of Garmon’s sacrifice for his country.
Sirens heralded the arrival of the 30-foot flag at the VFW fairgrounds. Garmon, his father Chris and VFW Post 6837 Commander Tommy Ward carried the folded and bagged flag from the truck.
Unity moment
I was working for Messenger in Gadsden at the time. Sometimes working as a reporter gives you rare opportunities to witness or experience something extraordinary. For me, my husband and our daughter who accompanied me, that night was one of those opportunities.
A patient crowd waited as veterans came forward to unfold the one-sided flag, a process that required one group to raise the flag up so another could walk underneath it to pull out the folds. As they stretched out the flag, everyone was invited to come forward and hold the edge of the historic article for a moment.
A celebration of a soldier’s sacrifice turned into a solemn, almost silent ceremony of this symbol of a nation born in rebellion and resilient through all that came after.
Those gathered — from biker dudes to bankers — quietly supported the outstretched flag, scars visible across its canvas. Many held the flag’s border for a moment, then stepped back, to motion others to come forward for their turn, as a gentleman I didn’t even know did for me and my daughter.
I’m sometimes cynical (an occupational hazard) but that struck me, that sharing of the experience — this touching a touchstone to our shared history with people connected only by little more that history.
I wonder today if such a moment could happen, among a populace that seems to cling to anything that divides us rather than reaching out to what connects us — all of us, regardless of political, economic, racial or religious differences.
I pray for better, kinder days, for us to put current events into the context of our nation’s history, to remember sacrifices made in the making of this nation — a nation that to me, have never not been great; a nation that may not have achieved its stated declarations for far too long, but made painful progress to them over time.
Perhaps that progress can continue if voices from podiums, pulpits, social media posts and voting places can be brave enough to consider what we share. Then perhaps this nation we call home can continue to be the land of the free.
Donna Thornton is the editor of The Sand Mountain Leader. Her email address is [email protected].
The National 9/11 Flag HONORS Program came to Boaz in 2013 with a flag that had been severely damaged at the World Trade Centers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The flag was repaired and is now at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York City. DONNA THORNTON l 2013 File
