STARKVILLE — For nearly three decades, a team of Realtors has taken to the streets just before Independence Day to blanket the town with American flags.
Employees from Coldwell Banker S.R.E Realtors in Starkville decorated the town’s central business district with more than 3,000 flags this year alongside their friends and family.
Now in its 28th consecutive year, the flag tradition started in local neighborhoods.
“When we started doing it, we actually just did it in the neighborhoods,” Coldwell Banker S.R.E. Broker and Owner Michelle Amos told The Dispatch. “… After doing that for eight or 10 years, Starkville started blowing up … and we couldn’t get to all the neighborhoods. So then we made the decision to concentrate our efforts and to blanket downtown, and we’ve been doing that ever since.”
Realtor Jan Rhodes and her late husband Melvin, a Vietnam veteran, helped spearhead the flag project during its first year. The inspiration, she said, was the hope that distributing the flags would encourage local patriotism.
Each year, Melvin made a concerted effort to visit each of the neighborhoods near downtown, distributing flags and building relationships with community members as he went, Rhodes said.
“It brings tears to my eyes because he loved it so much,” she told The Dispatch Thursday. “He visited with the children. He visited with the folks on porches. He visited with everybody as he did it, so it was quite an undertaking.”
They probably distributed around 1,500 flags in the beginning, Rhodes said. Though the tradition has grown, it has maintained its community-minded nature. It’s come to be something the community expects to see and always seems to appreciate, she said.
“We’re constantly stopped and thanked and (receive) phone calls back at the office and things like that,” Rhodes said. “It’s such an honor to be able to do this and feel totally safe and free and recognize our veterans.”
After 28 years, the team has the distribution down to a science. Though they have had to learn some lessons along the way, Amos said.
“We break it down into segments, and our agents all pitch in and bring friends and family members,” she said. “We’ve learned through the years that wagons and drills are good things because the ground is so hard that if you don’t use a drill, you truly can’t get the flags in the ground.”
For Amos, the tradition serves as a way to thank veterans like Melvin for their service.
“Every year it brings up the memory of how much it meant to (Melvin),” she said. “I think the heart of it is we’ve had agents throughout the years who have had either spouses or children who have served in the military, and it’s such a way to honor those, past and present, who have served because it’s a huge sacrifice.”
Having been raised in a family of veterans, Rhodes said she sees the tradition as a way to thank veterans, like her father and husband, for their sacrifice. Her hope is that the project continues to inspire the community to do the same.
“To me, it sets the tone for the whole town for the holiday,” she said. “I hope that it makes people realize how fortunate we are to live in America, in the land of the free, because I feel like a lot of this we take for granted.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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