When Edgecomb Fire Chief Roy Potter went with family members to visit his veteran-daughter’s grave in Highland Cemetery the morning of Memorial Day, the flags placed on veterans’ graves were “in such bad shape it was disgraceful,” he said.
State statute requires: “Each municipality, as directed by its municipal officers, annually shall decorate on the day Memorial Day is observed the graves of veterans of the Armed Forces of the United States of America with an American flag and appropriate flag holders.”
After Potter found faded, tattered flags – some even hanging upside-down because they had torn – he said he attempted to reach Selectman Stuart Smith, who was responsible for replacing the flags in that particular cemetery.
Failing to reach Smith, Potter went to the town office, retrieved the flags stored there and set about replacing the flags himself with the assistance of others at the cemetery.
“It’s hard to put in words how it made me feel,” Potter, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, said about finding the flags in the condition they were in. “It’s like somebody let part of you out and threw it on the ground and stomped on it.”
Smith said he is responsible for replacing the flags on veterans’ graves in Highland Cemetery as well as about five other veterans’ graves in three other cemeteries. Smith and his son had set aside days in the previous week to get the flags out, but got rained out, he said.
After Potter had taken the flags over to Highland, Smith said he stopped by the town office that morning to get the flags to begin setting them out but found the flags were missing, and so set out to replace the flags in his other three cemeteries with the few spare flags he already had.
“By the time I got to the town hall I couldn’t find any flags,” Smith said. Smith tried to locate where the flags had gone, and when he found out later that morning he “was a little upset but glad they got put out,” he said.
Smith said he was upset by the fallout that has come about from the mix-up, and the flags should have been checked throughout the year and been taken off the graves or replaced well before they got to the state in which they were found.
“The flags got put out on all the cemeteries, and they did get put out on Memorial Day,” Smith said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t get out early enough for him.”
Selectman Chair Jessica Chubbuck said she, Smith, and Selectman Jack Sarmanian split up the duties of decorating the veterans’ graves in the various cemeteries and try to do the same ones each year to make the task a little easier.
Chubbuck said she was “heartbroken” to hear about what had happened, and hopes shedding light on the incident will help ensure such a thing does not happen again.
“I wanted, on behalf of the town, [to] issue an apology for the family members who were at the grave sites before the flags were changed. I do feel that was upsetting for them and unfortunate,” Chubbuck said.
Potter also hopes to avoid a repeat of the situation
“If it’s something that I have to take on myself, then that’s what I will do. I feel that strongly about it. I’ll find time to do it,” Potter said. “I can’t change the fact that it did happen, the only thing I can do is push and push and push to see that it doesn’t happen again.”
Potter suggested the town might form a committee for the purpose of maintaining veterans’ graves, or perhaps have an outside organization such as a VFW or American Legion post assist the town with the task throughout the year.
The town has had assistance with the task from outside groups such as Boy Scouts of America in the past, but over the years the groups seem to give up and not follow through, Smith said.
Still, “we’re always open to it,” Smith said.
