July 4, One of the Days When the Flags Come Out in Pacific / There are Others / We Love Our Flags

By Pauline Masson – 

Dan McClain has added a new lighted inflatable to his July 4 front yard display this year and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it’s “Thank a Vet” message, ties the Stars and Stripes to Pacific’s reverence for all military veterans.

It’s impossible to know how many flags there are in Pacific. Jeannie Bandermann has a stash of flags. Carol Johnson has a stash. The Boys Scouts have a stash. The Lions Club has a stash. The City of Pacific has a stash. The Pacific Fire Protection District has a mammoth flag, so large that no flag pole can accommodate it hanging perpendicular for public events so the firefighters hang it straight up and down from an extended ladder.

On any patriotic holiday or special event the flags come out.

The Boy Scouts head to the City Cemetery and place a flag beside the grave stone of every veteran. Early on the Scouts enlisted the Meramec Valley Historical and Genealogical Society to locate all the veterans’s graves. The late Ruth Muehler, an unheralded history buff, spent several days walking the cemetery with the Scout to show them the location of every veteran’s grave. In 2021, I reported that the Boy Scouts installed almost 400 flags marking the graves of former service men and women buried in the City Cemetery.

Pacific Lion Henry Hahn loads his grandchildren into is vehicle and goes through downtown affixing flags to businesses that join the Lions Club Flag Program. Henry once told me that he thought the Lions began to put up flags in front of businesses in the 1960s.

Guy Husereau has one of the largest flags in town, a poignant mural depicting a saluting Marine in front of waving flag, painted on the side of his MORE Realtors building on North First Street. Like Dan McClain’s inflatable flag, Husereau’s flag is a salute to veterans. Veterans turned out in droves to sign the banner beside the mural the day it was dedicated. And, the Pacific High School JROTC has a splendid set of parade flags on poles that they carry in parades, dedication ceremonies and public events.

The dean of Pacific’s veneration of veterans seems to go to the Downtown Veteran’s Monument at Second and Osage streets that has honored local veterans since 1942. The stone monument was built during the uncertain days of WW II, to pay tribute to men who lost their lives serving in WWI. Names were created with individual letters placed on a simple marquee type board. 

When the American Legion Post 320 Auxiliary was named custodian of the monument, the ladies decided to upgrade the ageing structure. In 1991, Clarice Gerling chaired a campign to replace the marquee with a 4 foot by 9 foot by 7 inch granite slab etched with veterans’ names. She collected enough funds to purchase a new 30-foot flagpole, to replace the one hand crafted by Ken Shepherd some sixty years earlier.  About 110 citizens bundled against the cold on Veterans Day for American Legion Auxiliary Unit’s thirty-minute ceremony, which included reading each name on the newly etched panel.  

Touching as these examples are, they are among other things that set Pacific apart as a community that comes together in common celebration of patriotic and military holidays.

My first exposure to this community outpouring was (I think) 1999, when Pacific High School celebrated Nov. 11 with a special program where the entire student body recognized local World War II veterans in a rousing ceremony in the school gym. The veterans names and branch of service were announced as they marched in one-by-one. The school band played all the military theme songs. The veterans families, friends, and everyone who heard of the event came. This program has continued and grown into a community tradition. After the JROTC program came to Pacific, the Veterans Day tribute at Pacific High celebration has taken place every year and includes veterans in all branches of service who served in all conflicts, as well as veterans who served in peace time.

Pacific has a sometimes forgotten symbol that honors those who fell in military conflict. Seven city streets are named for individuals who had died during military service in World War I and World II: Holland, Payne, Orr, Roberts, Sanker, Thornton and Williams streets are named for fallen heroes.

Jeannie Bandermann probably could not tell you the exact date when she and her mother, the late Hilda Bandermann began collecting, military records, photos, places of burial of area veterans. It probably dated to 1991 when the American Legion Auxiliary gave the former marquee panel – with the veterans’ names attached – to the Meramec Valley History Museum.

Determined to collect information to go with each of the names, Jeannie and Hilda trekked to City of Pacific and remote country cemeteries to photograph veterans’ graves. When the museum closed, Jeannie copied all the files and continued to assemble veteran information, which she maintains in a row of file cabinets in her garage. After her files were helpful in retrieving lost medals for one deceased veteran, she became an advocate for assisting veteran’s families with information.

I think it was 2011 when Pat Smiley got the idea to create a walking military museum celebrating veterans in all conflicts in U.S. history. He raised funds and worked with two local history teachers to create the 36 black granite plaques that line the paved walking circle in Liberty Field. Local citizens bought into the project, providing funds for individual plaques that recognized their family members who had served. In October 2015 citizens stood under the huge Pacific Fire District flag (pictured above) brought to celebrate the official opening of the walking museum. The City also recognized the display as a city landmark. When the granite plaques began to weather, the City Tourism Commission paid to have them cleaned.

Carol Johnson used to go to Liberty Field on patriotic holidays and place a flag next to each of the black granite plaques along the walking path. Like Henry Hahn she recruited her grand daughters to help. But this year when she showed up, someone had already placed a flag next to each plaque.

Another memorable snippet of history on this much used park – it was originally purchased as a fairground, but one alderman, Dave Monroe, led and won a lively campaign to name the new park Liberty Field.

In 2020 the Lions Club lines expanded their flag program from downtown businesses to Osage Street (Route 66).

This now familiar display resulted from a patriotic outpouring that was spectacular even by Pacific’s patriotic history. In April 2013, Larry “The Flagman” Eckhardt heard that a young man from Pacific had been killed in Afghanistan he said he wanted to bring 2,100 flags to line the route when the remains were returned to Pacific.

Echardt almost back out when he realized he had agreed to provide flags for another military funeral, but when he learned that Carol Johnson and Jeannie Bandermann would choreograph the Pacific display he agreed to provide flags for the Jeffrey White procession. Johnson and Bandermann recruited volunteers to install the 10-foot flag poles along the parade route and joined the installation crew to add hundreds of flags from Pacific pageants to line the route from the city limits Bell Funeral Home. They

Few citizens had ever seen that many flags waving in one place. After witnessing the sea of flags and hundreds of citizens huddled under colorful umbrellas against the downpour that added a bit of drama to the event, Nancy Omer asked her fellow Lions to install flags on Osage for all patriotic holidays. She persuaded the City Tourism Commission to buy the flags and the City to install brackets for the flags on every light standard.

Several years later she asked the City to take over the task of storing the flags and installing them on holidays. The tradition is now that City of Pacific public works department installs 68 large flags to light standards between Pacific High School and The Red Cedar Inn building for Memorial Day, July 14 Flag Day, July 4 and Nov. 11 Veterans Day.

So, rain, shine, or heat wave, enjoy the flags on July 4 and remember to thank all the participants who keep this tradition alive