Barbie's Flag

Charley remembers a special 4th of July moment where his expectations twisted and turned as he attempted to raise 13 flags at the same time, including a special moment where a flag played a new role on this patriotic day.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
If you have listened to some of my previous podcasts,
you will know that I grew up in a very
patriotic family. My dad served in the Marine Corps. My
mom was from a tough mining town in Montana, a
place called Butte, Montana, And for those of you old
enough to remember, this was the same city and she
grew up around the same time as that famous Stare

(00:28):
Deevil we used to see on TV guy named Evil Knievel.
Same city he was born and raised in is where
my mom was and they used to run around together. So,
with the combination of my dad being a marine and
my mom coming from a tough mining community in Montana,
when it came to the Fourth of July, we went
all out. You know, it was a really big day. Dad,

(00:52):
you know, worked for an American company. Mom's family mining
and Marine Corps. So when the July fourth came around,
those early days of youth in San Diego have really
been instilled in me and I still tell the story.
I think back all the time. Some of the best
July Fourth I've ever had was as a kid growing
up in San Diego, because I recall on every July

(01:15):
Fourth when I was little, we would. You know, Mom
would wake us all up early, like five in the morning,
five thirty in the morning, and we would all get
in the car and we would have to drive from
where I'd lived elkahoone, California and just outside of Sango
over to Cornado, which is across there's a bridge that
connects it now, but we would cross the bridge just

(01:35):
off of downtown San Diego go to Cornado, and we'd
have to get there early. We have to set up
because my mom wanted to sit in a particular spot.
It was on the grass, it was on the inside
median and there were tree and once we were there
like that, we prayed. Didn't start till like maybe eight nine.
Were there six am. You know, we got our uncle

(01:57):
uncle Sam, big tall hats on red, white and blue.
You know, we were all just decked out. And remember
after the parade, we would go home, we would make
homemade ice cream, we would do some swimming, and it
was just always a holiday that was very important to
my family. And so that upbringing, particularly for the Fourth
of July, has stayed with me to this day. I

(02:21):
just posted recently that you know, I truly think and
I treat every day to some degree as it's the
fourth of July. You know, I posted on social media
a couple of my social media pages in my bubble every
day is the fourth of July, you know it. It's
a great holiday. I love it and have some good
stories about it. So today, though, I'll want to talk

(02:42):
to you about a story that I'm passing along that
has to do with a particular July fourth here in Tucson.
And that was July fourth, twenty fifteen, specifically a day
in which I, along with others, we made some history
here in Tucson with my nonprofit which I created the

(03:03):
Flags for the Flagless. I often try and combine a
flagged event with a particular holiday. And I just made
that phrase up flag event, because I don't know what
else to call what it is I've been doing for
the past ten years, you know, raising flags, empty flag poles,
some of them been empty for seventy years. That was
on a particular September eleventh, or the first flag I

(03:26):
raised to start off my mission was on Flag Day, right,
So I tried to do flag events on particular days.
There were two cases. I went back to Brooklyn, New York,
and I gave classroom flags in Brooklyn. One of those
visits took place on Flag Day, and then the following
September eleventh, I was back in Brooklyn at a different school,

(03:49):
giving classroom flags to them. So I always try to
do some event to coincide with some sort of significant
moment in American history, and that'll be a story for
No Day. I mean, being back in Brooklyn on September
eleventh to provide flags to a public school, which at
the time was the most diverse elementary school in Brooklyn,

(04:15):
you know, concluding that and then walking across the Brooklyn
Bridge down into Lower Manhattan to be at ground zero
on September eleventh. You know, Also that was my first
day as a cop, you know, so lots of emotions. Anyway,
that's that'd be a good story. Is a great moment
in my life as well. So so back to July
twenty fifteen. It was on that day, that July fourth,

(04:39):
where I assembled twelve different groups of various sizes. Some
of the groups had two people in them, others had
twelve people in them, and they were all going to
be dispersed throughout various locations here in Tucson. All the
groups had one mission and that was to raise thirteen
American flags on thirteen different flagpoles at their respective locations,

(05:03):
with the goal of having each and every one of
them raised up at exactly nine am that morning. Other
than that, I gave no other direction to the groups
how they wished to raise the flag, how they dressed
for the occasion. I put it all on them. In
order to prepare for this July fourth this undertaking, I

(05:24):
need to do some reconnaissance, if you will. Little detective work,
shall we say, required that I go throughout the midtown
area of Tucson, and I needed to identify thirteen empty flagpoles,
flagpoles which had no flags upon them, right, which was
pretty easy at the time, was not hard to find them,
there was. I spotted thirteen of them pretty easy. Once

(05:45):
I did that, I needed to make contact with someone
at each of the locations of where these empty flagpoles were. Right.
I needed to make sure it was okay with each
and every property owner that I could put a flag
up on their empty flagpole. I know this may sound silly,
but there has been on occasion a few times where
I've asked permission of a property owner who had an

(06:08):
empty flagpole. If I could put a new one up,
and I've been told no, they didn't want a new
flag placed on their perfectly flying, fine flagpole. So I
just covered my bases. Every time went to thirteen flagpole owners,
talked to each and every one of them got the
okay from them, and I did that. So when I
met with each the owners, I explained to them, you

(06:29):
know what I was going to do, what my plan was,
and that was to raise thirteen flags up all over
town at the same time, and asked them if it
was okay. All of them said no problem. Many of
the locations where I planned to raise these new flags
hadn't had a flag on them in twenty years or more.
Some of the locations I had identified were some old

(06:52):
historic hotels gathered along a once bustling part of town
before the interstate was built, a stretch of Tucson they
call Miracle Mile, and there's a bunch of motor lodges
that were all along Miracle Mile, and those places all
had really old flagpoles out in front of them. So

(07:12):
there's like five or six that I was able to
make contact with and put flags up and let me
go back. For those who don't know what a motor
lodge is. It's basically where it's just this one story
motel where you can just drive your car up right
in front of your room and park it right there, right.
So if you've got a family and a bunch of
luggage kit you know, back in the day people are

(07:33):
traveling by car, just roll right in, park right in
front of your room and unload in your car's right
there some motor lodges, but the interstate that affected that
particular part of town. But there's some old ones and
there's some flags up over there. So some of the
other businesses that I put flag up was a dry
cleaning business, large store unit facility was another location. There

(07:57):
was a pizza restaurant near the U of A, near
the local university, and I even right around the corner
from the main police station, I found a historic mortuary
that was in downtown that had a big flagpole that
needed a flag on it. So I made sure in
the weeks prior that all the flagpoles had rope on them,
and that each flagpole had the clips and hooks that

(08:20):
you attached the flag to right, and I had them
all set at a pre set distance of three feet apart. Right,
I was going to give each group a three foot
by five foot and in flag, and all they would
have to do was then hook that flag on to
where the clips were already pre set three six inches
apart every single pole, Because, like always, you know, I

(08:44):
wanted to make raising the American flag on a flagpole
as easy as possible for anyone who had a flagpole
or who used a flagpole. I wanted so on this
July fourth, when each group arrived at their you know,
assigned location, all they would have to do is show
up with that brand new and in flag I gave
them and attached it to the clips that I already provided,
and you know, set the proper distance. I also made

(09:07):
sure that I had a name of everybody in a group, right,
I had a point of contact of all these groups
that were scattered around town. So have something changed, I
need to get in touch with me. We could communicate,
you know, I could pass on whatever information that they required.
One of the flag poles that day that went up
was assigned to the Tucson Police Department, to the SWAT team.

(09:30):
I had another flag pole that had the Tuson Police
Honor Guard raising a flag at another flagpole. I had
members of the union, the police union leadership raising a
flag pole, you know, so just and some other ones
were just friends, right, supporters of my organization, which was
still in its infancy. Right, this is July fourth, twenty fifteen,

(09:55):
and the first flag which I raised was June fourteenth,
thousand and four, right, so just over a year. I
haven't been doing this for very long. And you know,
so just people that knew and supported me early on
is who I reached out to, because all the time
I get people saying, you know, let me know if
I can ever help you. Sure Enough, I called in
and people more than willing to come out. And in

(10:19):
these groups, I also included myself in the mix, and
I signed myself a flagpole so that me and my
family could go down on July fourth and we could
raise a flag. And this was going to be on
another historic building near downtown. It was a building that
was in my patrol beat, so I'd passed by it
all the time, and it was here where I first
met Lupita Montiel. I met Lupite after I'd gone in

(10:49):
to get permission from the business owner to raise a
flag on the flagpole, which is in front of this location.
The owner of the business introduced herself as Lupita. This
was the first meeting that she and I had ever had,
you know, crosspaths met each other. It was a few
weeks part to July fourth. You know. We spoke about

(11:11):
her building what she owned now for quite some time,
and I asked her a little history about the place
and what it was back in the early days. And
she told me that she had bought the business in
nineteen seventy four and at the time it was a
gas station service station. She told me how she used
to you know, stock candy on the shelves in the

(11:32):
early days, how she used to sell milk from this
little stand that was out along Main street in front
of her business. She told me that she raised her
family and her residence attached to the rear of the
service station. But the main part, the main location was
no longer service station. Upita now has her own bailbond
business that she runs there, and she has accounting service

(11:52):
out of the building. But she still has her residence
at the rear of this location, you know, where she
raised her family. And she spoke of a lover country
and her many family members so had served in the
military over the years, and this included her daughter Barbara.
I explained to her my plan for that morning of

(12:13):
July fourth, you know again, thirteen American flags going up,
all at nine am sharp if things went according to plan.
She agreed and said she'd be ready at nine am,
and I'll come out and I'll watch all glory to
be raised in front of my building, which had had
a flag on it. She'd even know it had been
some time. So on this particular flag event, I had

(12:33):
a local news organization and a camera crew. They wanted
to follow along and document some of the events at
the various locations that I put together. They knew that
nothing like this had ever had been done before, at
least that none of us were aware of it, and
certainly had not ever been done in Tucson. You know,
they'd documented history in the making. Right in front of them.
They have thirteen American flags, all being raised at the

(12:54):
same time, at thirteen different locations, all put together by
one local or organization. Right. They were all about it.
They wanted to come out, and they wanted to be
a part of it. Myself and some family members with
the local camera crew, we agreed that we would meet
in front of the pizza's business at eight thirty on
the morning of July fourth. So on that July fourth,

(13:18):
like always, I arrived early, right as usually, I'm always early,
as most cops are to any place, you give them
a set time to meet. It's our nature, it's our job.
Right on time as being late. I was there early
alongside my family and we met the camera crew who
was already there and they had arrived about the same
time we had, and we were in front of the

(13:39):
Piza's business and I introduced everyone and made sure everyone,
you know, knew who everybody was, and I explained to
everybody there again what the detail was, what we had
planned for that morning, and we just were sitting around talking,
hanging out hot, you know, as you can imagine July
and the desert, but especially July. It's monsoon season out
here now and so it's muggy, it's just brutal. So

(14:04):
it's July fourth, and we're out in front of her
Lupita's business in about eight fifty about ten to nine.
Look at my watch and there's no Lupita La Pizza's
nowhere to be seen. So she hadn't come up to
meet us. Yet you know, we had scheduled to raise
the flag up on her flagpole and you know, ten
minutes or so. And I was like, okay, I can't.

(14:28):
I can't be the weak link today, right, I'm not
going to be the ones who failed at this mission
to get this flag up at nine am. I mean
it was for me. It was myself who put this
whole thing together, right, And I wasn't going to allow this.
At least my flagpole wasn't going to be the one
that was going to be delayed or didn't happen on time. Right.
I was not going to let that happen, or was

(14:52):
I right? I mean, it's out of my control. I'm
not doing anything without the pizza and her family. So
I went and I knocked on the door to the
pizza's business, and of course, with it being July fourth,
it's locked or signed the window of July fourth, we're
closed for the weekend. So I said, okay, So I

(15:13):
feel a little bit of sweat starting to come on
my forehead. I'm getting I don't know if it's because
of the heat, because now I'm getting a little nervous.
I'm going to just blame on the heat. I don't
think I was that nervous, but I was pretty stressed.
I'm want to say the heat. But I remember that
she told me that she had her residence in the back.
So I walked around the corner of the building and

(15:35):
I walked down along the side of the Piza's business
to the rear, since I knew this is where or
she had told me that she lived. And she had
a fence up that I couldn't get to it, right,
it was just this wrought iron, just a fence that
couldn't have access to the front door. So I just
kind of pound on the side of the fence and

(15:57):
the kind of shake the gay a little bit, and
her dog ugs. She must have had four or five dots.
They went crazy bark and you know, yip and holler
in I'm yelling for the pite. It's a circus, right,
so I'm yelling for Lupita. And she heard me. She
was inside somewhere and I heard her say, you know, okay,
I'll be out in a few minutes. Okay, you know again,

(16:20):
what can I do? I can't make time stop, I
can't slow it down. And here I'm the one who
imposed this deadline, this nine am deadline right on everybody,
and I'm like, is there, Am I going to be
that guy? Am I going to be the group that
didn't get it done? I'm the one that put it together.
I'm the one that I posed the time, and here
I'm about to become the one guy. The one group

(16:41):
probably can't get up at nine am. So I walked
back up to the front where the camera crew was
and my family, you know, they were kind of nervously
waiting for me to return, and it was now starting
to get hot. Right it's close to nine, It's muggy
July fourth morning. And I spoke with a camera crew
that was there with my family, explaining that Lapita said

(17:02):
she'd be out shortly. You know, there's nothing else I
can do, So we all just kind of nervously kind
of rock back and forth, Okay, looking at the rope,
making sure everything's said. I got it untied from the pole, Like,
all I gotta do is have her walk out. I
can attach this three by five flag and raise it.
So in a few minutes before nine, on what seemed

(17:24):
to be one of the hottest Saturdays of the year,
I see Lupita. She emerged from her home, and she
began walking along the sidewalk towards the flagpole in the
front of her business, and she had some family members
falling behind her. I could see she had a big
smile on her face when she saw me. But as
she's walking up, I noticed something else. And as Lupita

(17:49):
was slowly now approaching us, the camera guys, my family
and the group out front. As she begins to get closer,
I can see that she's carrying something in her arms.
You know, I couldn't see what, but she was cradling,
you know, was it her purse. I couldn't see because
the way, the shadows and the trees and you know,
the fence line. But as she got closer, I could

(18:11):
make out what it was. And what it was was
a brand new starch folded American flag in a shape
of a triangle. I know that a flag which is
folded like this into a triangle oftentimes has presented has
been presented to a family member next to kin when

(18:32):
a military veteran has passed, right, So I was a
little confused when I saw this. I was. I remember
telling her like, look, I'll provide the flag. You don't
have to do anything. You know, I've got everything you need.
So she never said that she wanted to use her
own flag to me, or she didn't want to say
she want to use a different one from the one

(18:54):
which I was providing to her. I wasn't sure if
she even wanted this particular flag to be raised on
her flag pulled this July four, right, perhaps, you know
when this happened before, people have wanted to donate family
members flags to me. So I'm like, okay, well, maybe
she wants to donate this flag to my foundation. You know,
I didn't know. So I got all these questions spinning

(19:14):
through my head, and in just a few seconds it
took for her to walk up towards me. I asked her,
you know, did you want to use this flag? You know?
And if she did, I would oblige. I would have
to what am I going to say? No, right to her?
This is her flagpole, it's July fourth, it's her business.

(19:36):
And I had set the clips. But if she wanted
to use this larger flag, I would have to do
some measurements and you know, space out the clips a
little bit further from three feet to five feet. Right.
Casket flags are five feet tall and nine and a
half feet long, and they're that long and wide because

(19:56):
they cover her casket to cover a coffin, Thus people
call them casket FLA flags are also known as coffin flags.
So that was the case. I'd have to readjust the
clips to a combinator flag. If that's what she wanted,
no problem, But time was running out. There's no way
I was gonna have enough time to readjust the clips,
make sure larger flag could fit properly, and then raise
it up at nine am. I just began to accept

(20:17):
my fate, like, okay, it is what it is, so
don't forget, you know. Also, as this is happening, I
have got a camera crew with me. Family's there. It's
like two minutes before nine. They're watching this all unfold.
So as Lapita walks up to me and she greets

(20:37):
our group in front of her business with about two
minutes before nine, I just asked her. I said, Lapito,
is what is this flag for? You know? Would you
like this one raised in place of the one which
I was providing, or are you wanting to donate you know,
this particular flag to my foundation like some other folks
had done before. And it was then that the Pita

(21:01):
proceeded to tell me the significance of this new starch
triangle folded flag which she was cradling in her arms.
She said, Charlie, I had a daughter, Barbara. Joanne Peeda
told me I called her Barbie. She had once served
in the Army. After leaving the army, Barbie returned to Tucson.

(21:23):
But in two thousand and six, Barbie was tragically taken
from me. She was killed by a drunk driver. She
was crossing a street right here in Tucson. The Pita continued,
July fourth was her favorite holiday. She was so so patriotic,
and she loved her country very much, even at a

(21:44):
young age. She says, this flag as she looked down
up beyond this flag she was holding. This flag is
the flag which was given to me when she died
because of her military service. I wanted to bring this
flagb out here so she could watch and be with
us on her favorite holiday, watch as a new American

(22:06):
flag went up today. She would have loved it. I
had no response none. I had no idea what I
was supposed to say. You know, of all the things
that were racing through my mind as Lapita's approaching me,
you know, walking up the sidewalk to the flagpole. This

(22:30):
was not something even remotely that came to my mind.
I couldn't believe it. I turned and I looked at
my family and the TV crew which were standing behind me,
to see if they had heard what Lapita just said,
like maybe I misunderstood the stress, the heat. No, they
couldn't believe it either, what they just heard. This wasn't planned,

(22:51):
it wasn't anticipated by any of us. So to be
a part of this moment, to have this interaction witnessed
by others, truly an amazing moment, a memory that will
stay with me forever. Since that July fourth, Lapitea's husband
has passed away, and I make it a point that

(23:13):
when and if I find myself around the area of
downtown Tuson where Lapita lives, I make sure to swing
by and check on, as I call it, Barbie's flag.
And just a few weeks ago, I drove by and
I saw that Lapita didn't have a flag up, didn't
have Barbie's flag up. And I've known her and her
family now long enough that this was most likely because

(23:34):
the previous one was tattered and weathered, and she took
it down. So as I was driving, I just pulled
in and I carried flags with me wherever I go.
So I found a flag, you know, in my in
my box that I carry in my truck, and attached
it and put it up. I didn't go inside, you know,

(23:55):
I didn't go and look for try to look for
her so I could tell her about the new flag
which I put up front. I just know that when
she sees it, she will know exactly how to put
a new flag in front of her business for she
and party.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Flags
for the Flagless. This episode was produced by Charlie Foley,
Doug Levy, and Jason Whykout. To listen to Charlie's newest episodes,
please download and subscribe through your favorite podcast service, and
if you like the show enough, leave a review.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Your thoughts would greatly be appreciated.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Flags for the Flagless United Stories of America is proudly
produced and distributed by the eight Side Network