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John MacFarlane offered our invocation while Jamie Olson led us in songs, followed by a recitation of The Four Way Test. Our guests included Kennedy Secondary School Principal Mark Anderson and Carla Swanson, mother of Eric Swanson, an eighth grader to whom Dean Monke presented a $100 honorarium for being recognized as a student who lives the Four Way Test. Also introduced were juniors Maggie Heikes and Layla Nasri, both of whom shared a little bit about themselves and why they applied to attend Camp RYLA this summer. We conducted our raffle drawing and the winner of the $1,000 grand prize was our very own Kathy Austvold! Thank you to everyone who sold tickets, as we sold 702 of the 750 tickets printed. Those doing a little bragging included Tim Hunt for a successful medical checkup; Mary Pettit for Bill and her celebrating their 39th wedding anniversary; Wally Cole for Marci and him serving as sergeant-at-arms at the GOP state convention in Rochester and joining us virtually from Wisconsin where they were visiting his third daughter, her husband and four grandchildren; Wally also told us he had put in a run of 3.2 miles (5k) along county roads that day. Others bragging or fining themselves included Jamie Larson for missing the prior week's Board meeting; Randy Kempfer for getting the Josh the Otter books distributed to OLV the prior Friday and the plan to do so at the public schools after our meeting; and Brian Tjaden acknowledging Buzz Lundeen and Kiwanis for their efforts in selling and buying raffle tickets.  Tami Gerhardson then spoke to us about the Fergus Falls Veterans Walk of Flags, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit independent organization that is responsible for acquiring, maintaining, putting up and taking down our national flag in Fergus Falls ten days of the year: Loyalty Dau, Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Purple Hearts Day, Labor Day, POW/MIA Day, Columbus Day and Veterans Day. Terry Felton started this effort in 2002 with flags being purchased by individuals at $75 a flag to honor anyone who has served in the armed forces in any war and received an honorable discharge. The first coordinated display was way back on May 27, 2002, when 101 flags went up; two weeks later the number had grown to 383. By 2007 they were putting up 1337 flags and today they are up to 1922 flags, all in their own specific location with the name of the veteran attached to each flag on display. They have four different trailers that hold about 500 flags each. On days when they are to be displayed, they start putting them up at 7:30 a.m. and start taking them down at 4:30 p.m. Tami said they are not envisioning adding more flags at this point as they are limited by the number of volunteers they normally recruit for set-up and take-down. Tami got involved because her father was a veteran for whom a flag is flown and her mother was, as Tami described her, "Rosie the Riveter," working on transforming commercial airplanes to war use in the Twin Cities during WWII. Her involvement, now as president and chief recruiter of volunteers, was also probably influenced by living across the street from a prior president of the organization. They have a Facebook page that can be accessed by going to fergusfallsveteranswalkofflags. If interested in helping out, you can contact Tami at (218) 731-2450 or by e-mailing her at tamigerhardson@gmail.com. |
