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Date: 7/2/2021
SOUTH HADLEY – Town residents in South Hadley now have a new way to retire old flags without disposing of them in the garbage or making their way to the transfer station.
Mike Slater, who serves as the director of the South Hadley and Easthampton Veterans District, said for a while there had been a small drop-off at the transfer station residents used. However, at the beginning of the pandemic it had been removed for a variety of reasons.
“There was a small residential mailbox that the veteran organization had established at the transfer station. At the beginning of the pandemic there were several safety issues,” he said. “That drastically reduced public access to it, so they took the box down and returned it to the veterans organization.”
Slater said the box was used frequently by residents and was sometimes overflowing with flags when it was checked by members of the South Hadley VFW Post 3104. “Someone would go down every weekend to check, there was always at least one flag. Sometimes there would be more than the mailbox could hold,” he said. Slater recalled times when the box would be so full that the woman working in the South Hadley Swap Shop had emptied the box and kept the flags secure so residents could continue to use the box.
“She would empty it out and secure the flags in the Swap Shop that way people could continue to put flags in. Sometimes we would go down and pick up a whole bag full of flags,” he said. “It was steady, people were using it regularly.”
This, Slater explained, was a significant reason the organization knew another box had to be established. He said when the box was removed from the transfer station, the organization reached out to the town administrator to see where a new box could be placed. “When that box was removed, we reached out as a veterans organization to the town administrator, Mike Sullivan. He was very helpful with how we could create a solution and what we could look at long term,” he said.
Ultimately, he said the town donated their old ballot dropbox that was taken out of service to the organization to use as a flag drop-off. Slater said the dropbox was taken out of service due to the town needing to upgrade the security on the box, which was done by replacing it with a “heavier lockbox.”
After receiving the box as a donation, Slater said a member of the organization who is an artist donated their time to paint the box prior to it being placed in its new location at Town Hall. Ultimately, he said the organization’s goal was to create another drop-off box on the other side of town. “Our end goal is to create another one and put it up in the Commons area of South Hadley for easier access to people on both sides of town,” he said.
Slater emphasized the importance of retiring a flag in the correct way rather than simply throwing it in the trash. “As veterans the American flag is the most sacred thing for us, it really drove us in service,” he said, adding that the “bulk” of flags that the organization retired were from graves of veterans within the community. “For us it’s disheartening to see a flag in the trash.”
He said they were hoping “to give people a place where they can come and drop off the flag where it’s being retired.” Additionally, he said the organization was hoping to educate the younger population and pass on the knowledge of why it’s important to properly retire a flag.
While they were still working out details, Slater said they’d been given permission from the town to host a town-wide flag parade which would lead to a large flag retirement at a central location. “That’s still in the process, and will be either the weekend before or after Flag Day. The goal was to set it up last year, but due to the pandemic we were not able to do that,” he said.
Additionally, he said he was hoping to establish a box in Easthampton and had begun the process of discussing it with the mayor.