The Honor Guard Man Put His Name on My Flag Ceremony. I Had the Clipboard to Prove It

The Hearing Room in the county courthouse annex was full on July 14. Volunteers from every year of the ceremony sat in the folding chairs, some of them in their Memorial Day shirts. A reporter from the Waco paper had a notebook open on her knee. Eddie sat in the second row with his cap in his lap.

Pastor Greer’s prayer was short, just as he had promised. He thanked God for the men and women who had served, and for the ones who had folded the flags with their own hands in the heat. Several people said amen.

Blake went first. He stood at the front with a laptop and a projector screen. His slides showed five years of attendance numbers, a smiling photo of the 2023 ceremony, and a bar chart that he said showed honor guard participation was up forty percent. He spoke well. I will give him that. He had a gift for making a room feel like it was on his side.

When he finished, board member Carol Ansel raised her hand. “Mr. Hollister, can you show us the volunteer records for the last five years?”

“Of course,” Blake said. “Those are kept in the program office.”

“Mrs. Pruitt,” the chairman said. “You asked to speak.”

I stood up. My knees were stiff from the drive, but I walked to the front without using the rail. I placed my gray folder on the table, opened it, and took out my 1975 service summary. I read the MOS line aloud: radio operator, 2531, honorable discharge, May 1975.

Then I set down the original 2014 sign-up sheet, with my name in block capitals at the top and the number one beside it.

Then I laid out Marcy’s copies of the 2021 through 2025 forms, one by one, in a neat row. Marcy had brought the archive binders herself. She stood at the side of the room with her arms folded and her face completely still.

“I was there,” I said, “and I can prove it.”

The room got very quiet.

Ruben stood up from his seat near the back and walked forward. He put his carbon copies beside mine and looked at the board. “I kept the stipend checks,” he said. “I also kept my own copies of the 2014 forms. The handwriting on the 2021 through 2025 sheets is Dot Pruitt’s, and some of it is mine. I’ll say that under oath if you need me to.”

The chairman called a short recess. People stood up and whispered. The reporter wrote quickly. Blake stood by the projector and did not look at anyone.

When the board came back, the chairman read a statement. It was short and clear. The honor program board apologized to Dorothea Pruitt, a Marine veteran and the original designer of the Memorial Day flag ceremony, for failing to recognize her work and for the misuse of program records. The board named Mrs. Pruitt lead organizer of the Memorial Day honor program, effective immediately.

Then the chairman asked Blake if he had anything to say.

Blake stood. He looked tired, and for the first time he didn’t smile. He read a short written statement in a flat voice. He was resigning as honor guard coordinator and as an employee of the veterans’ council, effective that day.

When the meeting turned to the stipend, I raised my hand. “I’d like the stipend money to go to the Veterans Services emergency fund for widows,” I said. “Ray and I didn’t have much when he passed. Some of the women in this room don’t either.”

The board agreed without a vote against it. Carol Ansel wiped her eyes with a tissue.

Afterward I walked out to the hallway, where I had left Lyle’s folded flag in its triangle of blue and white. My brother was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in 2019, and I had carried that flag ever since. I set it on the long table by the water cooler and touched the corner once, the way you touch a sleeping child’s blanket.

Eddie came up beside me and put his cap back on. “You ready to go home, Dot?”

“I am,” I said.

We walked out together into the July heat. Behind us, a crew was already lowering the banner off the front of the Veterans Services building. I heard the crew working on it as we walked. I kept Lyle’s flag folded in my arms all the way to the car, and I did not need to say another word about it.