News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
The City of Sisters is learning that it's hard to say "No" to veterans wanting to fly the American flag - no matter what the reason.
The Sisters City Council decided not to fund or participate in placing a 25-foot flag pole in Village Green Park to look over a memorial stone planted by local veterans organizations. The city approved placement of the stone, which will feature a plaque honoring Sisters veterans who have died over the past decades.
Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8138 and American Legion Post 86 host a Memorial Day ceremony at Village Green Park each year.
According to councilor Bill Merrill, the decision was made out of respect for the fact that Sisters already has a Veterans Memorial Park, located along Highway 20 at the west end of town.
Merrill, a 29-year Army veteran who retired as a Colonel, was designated by the council to deliver the city's message to Sisters VFW Commander Phil Gale, who originally proposed the flag pole to the council in January.
That park was created by the Sisters Rotary Club and is maintained as a school project by students from Sisters Christian Academy. It was dedicated on May 30, 2006, in a ceremony featuring keynote speaker and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Robert D. Maxwell.
The park hosts a "welcome" sign, a plaque honoring veterans, a flag pole and landscaping. The city council believes it would dilute and diminish the impact of the existing Veterans Memorial Park to create something essentially the same at Village Green Park. The city recognizes that the Veterans Memorial Park is not as suitable a location for the annual Memorial Day ceremony as is the Village Green.
"Our purpose, really, is to say: 'Look, we have a memorial to our veterans. It may not be in the place you want it, but it's there, and it's taken care of by kids from a school,'" Merrill told The Nugget. "It's not that the flag is not recognized or that sort of thing. It's not that we don't have a veterans memorial. Quite frankly, I think if they'd come to us first and said 'that's what we want to do,' it probably would have been approved."
The decision has sparked some heated rhetoric (see Letters to the Editor, page 2).
Gale says he doesn't want a fight, but the city's decision doesn't make sense to veterans organizations.
"It (the Village Green monument) by rights should have a flag pole with a flag flying," he said. "It baffles some of us. It baffles a lot of us, actually."
Gale emphasized that VFW would maintain the flag pole and be responsible for keeping it lit and raising and lowering it to half-staff as required by decree.
"All you (the city) have to do is put it in and we'll maintain it," he said. "It's ... our honor to do that."
He also noted that the Village Green memorial is different from the existing Veterans Memorial Park in that the monument plaque will list Sisters veterans by name.
Gale said that if the city doesn't want to fund the flag pole, he'd like the council to stand aside and let the veterans do it themselves.
"If you don't want to support this, then we can raise the funds and put it in ourselves," he said.
But, according to Merrill, funding is not the issue.
"The real reason is that we don't want to take away from the other memorial that is taken care of by those kids," he said.
Merrill noted that the city has offered to provide flag stands for the presentation of the colors at the annual Memorial Day ceremony, in addition to approving the memorial stone.
The flag is a hot-button issue on the scale of religion in schools, and everyone involved is aware that emotions can get white hot in a hurry.
"I want to handle this peacefully, without a lot of name-calling," Gale told The Nugget. "I don't want this to be a dirty thing, an ugly thing, because it cheapens what we're trying to do."
But the veterans are not done pushing. They plan to attend the next city council meeting to request that they be allowed to place the flag pole themselves.
"I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of people at this next council meeting," Gale said.
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Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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