Legion salutes veterans, supplying Forest Hill with flags for graves

With as many as an estimated 2,000 American veterans buried within the confines of Forest Hill Cemetery in Greencastle, decorating their resting places in time for holidays can be taxing not only on cemetery personnel but the flags they put out.

Things got a little better Thursday afternoon when representatives of Greencastle American Legion Post 58 presented Forest Hill Supt. Ernie Phillips with 200 new flags.

Representing Greencastle American Legion Post 58, Sons of the Legion Adjutant Richard Coffin (left) and Chaplain Steve Linton (right) present 200 new American flags to Forest Hill Cemetery Supt. Ernie Phillips outside the cemetery office on Putnamville Street Thursday afternoon. The flags will be used on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July to decorate the graves of local veterans buried at Forest Hill. Banner Graphic/ERIC BERNSEE

Richard Coffin, adjutant for the local post's Sons of the American Legion group, joined Chaplain Steve Linton in presenting the flags after they had even taken the time to carefully press out the wrinkles after unrolling them from their shipping carton.

Supplying the flags for veterans' graves is just "one of the many services the American Legion tries to provide," Coffin said, noting that Linton brought up the subject at a recent Legion meeting after hearing Phillips talk about the need for flags at the cemetery.

"I know it's been over 10 years," Phillips said, since any new flags were acquired by Forest Hill.

It won't be that long again, Coffin assured.

"In the future," he told Phillips, "the Legion will annually provide what Forest Hill needs."

Forest Hill puts flags on veterans' graves that have been marked as such or where families have requested a flag to designate their loved one's armed service.

That makes an exact count difficult, Phillips said, noting that veterans' graves dot the Forest Hill landscape and aren't confined to the veterans section at the southwest corner of the city cemetery. But many family markers don't denote the resting place of a veteran.

One estimate suggests the cemetery houses 500 veterans' graves but Phillips disagreed with that figure.

"It's way over 500 and probably less than 2,000," he reasoned, noting it routinely takes his staff two hours to set the flags out, even with the help of eight to 10 4-H volunteers.

It takes at least that long to pick them up, he said, noting that some flags succumb to bad weather or broken sticks or extended use and can no longer be used, thus necessitating the need for replacements.

Phillips said the cemetery usually doesn't put the flags out on individual graves for Veterans Day because of the probability of bad weather and a lack of manpower with the 4-H'ers unavailable to assist in the fall.

"But they'll look real nice for Memorial Day," Linton suggested.

Phillips told the Legion representatives that the veterans section, located directly west of the section surrounding the Civil War Monument, was developed after the old farmhouse office in that corner of the cemetery burned down in 1979. It is already full.

Forest Hill is scheduled to expand the veterans' section to the south, Phillips said.