Veterans place flags

A constant chilling rain didn't keep a group of military veterans from recognizing the past service of their fellow comrades in arms by placing an American flag at the gravesites of veterans who have passed away.

"I see a lot of names that I knew when they were alive. A lot of good friends here," said Leyland "Butch" Murdock, one of 10 veterans that helped with the flags at Plains Cemetery last Wednesday.

Each year, members of Horse Plains VFW Post 3596 place a small U.S. flag at the gravesite of each military veteran in preparation for May 30, the original Memorial Day, which the post recognizes, instead of the Monday the government established. Nine men and one woman, veterans of the Army, Air Force and Navy, placed 473 flags, four more than last year, at the gravesites.

Air Force veteran Heather Allen, the post quartermaster, has coordinated the annual project since 2020. "It is important to us to place a flag at each headstone to honor their military service and remember them because they should never be forgotten. They can no longer walk beside us, so it is up to us to keep their memory alive and their new mission is to watch over us," said Allen, at 48, the youngest veteran to participate.

The VFW in Plains started the program in the 1970s. It's been an ongoing process to properly identify all of the veterans at the Plains Cemetery, which used to be done with a crude handwritten list and a lot of searching. Army veteran Polly Gill, a former Plains resident, modernized the process, but Allen has improved on it by computerizing the entire program to make it easier for the volunteers to find each gravesite. Each team of the six sections received a folder with a map and a list of the exact location of the veterans' headstones in each section.

"Typically a team of two takes a clipboard and the flags needed for that section. When we have more people, the team is three, and with less people, sometimes a person has to work solo, like today," said Allen, who started digitizing the system about four years ago. She fine tunes the system each year and adds the names of those who pass on.

Plains resident Ed Foste, a retired Navy veteran, designed a small PVC pipe for each gravesite to make placing the wooden flag staff easier for placement. Foste made more than 1,000 of them for all the cemeteries of Sanders County. Foste, who was among the flag planters Wednesday, has been in the process of cleaning the veteran headstones. The veterans buried at Plains Cemetery include people who had taken part in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

It took the group almost an hour and a half to get all the flags out. The 76-year-old Vietnam War veteran Murdock has helped with the flag program several times. Even though he must walk with a cane these days, he continues to limp from grave to grave, but he couldn't kneel down to insert the flag. Instead, he carried bunches of flags for Foste and Ken Altman, a man he was stationed with in Coronado, Calif., during his 23 years as a boatswain's mate.

Murdock said he has a lot of veteran friends buried at Plains Cemetery and wanted to do his part to honor them. He went into the Navy in 1966 right after graduating from Plains High School. Each year, whether assigned to that section of the cemetery or not, Murdock places a flag on the grave of Lucky Lund, the man who convinced him to go Navy.

Altman has placed flags on vets' graves nearly two dozen times as a member of the American Legion in Mineral County, but this was his first time at Plains. "I'm a flag waver, so I believe we very much should honor the vets, even those that have passed," said the 68-year-old Altman.

The 84-year-old Jim Gillibrand was the oldest volunteer placing flags and has participated each year since 1999. "I like the VFW and being part of that organization and I think it's our job to help vets, including those that have passed," said Gillibrand, an Army military policeman from 1958-1961. "It's good that we recognize those that served in the military," he said. Gillibrand and Ron Kilbury, the post commander and a Navy and Army veteran, flagged over 50 gravesites Wednesday. Kilbury also placed about 120 flags at gravesites at Thompson Falls Cemetery.

"We place the flags on veteran's graves for Memorial Day to honor and remember their sacrifices for our country," said Kilbury, who has said that the flags remind family members of veterans so that those vets are not forgotten. It took members of the VFW Auxiliary Unit 3596 about two hours to place 30 flags at the sites of military member spouses, said auxiliary member Nora Verpoorten, who was assisted by Carol Harris, Cindy Gray and Linda Barnes.

The Dixon Cemetery, which in the past was done by Charles "Ole" Oelschlager, a Navy vet, and his wife, Jan, was done this year by Army veteran Joe Wittig. He had helped the Oelschlager couple in the past, but on Friday he did the more than a dozen flags at Dixon by himself. "I just think I need to do it to honor those veterans that died," said the 63-year-old Wittig, who served in the Army for 21 years.

Bill Beck was another regular participant in the program. "It's an honor and a tradition to do the flags out of respect for the veterans," said the 83-year-old Beck, who retired from the Navy as a senior chief after 26 years. Beck said the flags commemorate the sacrifices that the military men and women make for their country by facing hazardous duty, isolation, family separation, and long hours. And once again Army veteran Dan Johnson placed a Rainier beer at the site of his uncle, William Johnson, a World War II vet. Vietnam War Army veteran Don Kunzer placed the last flag.

The post will retrieve the flags on Friday, May 31.