BrightView Honors Veterans with Retired Flags

Walking through the Baltimore branch warehouse late last year, the Branch Administrator, Christine Thayer, came upon 75 retired American flags BrightView inherited from a client.

She alerted her teammate and fellow Branch Administrator, Maggie Shannon, who did some digging and found that BrightView stores the flags for various clients.

Learning the clients no longer needed them, Shannon wanted to ensure the flags were properly disposed of. After a quick online search, she connected with a local funeral home that places flags with veterans before they are cremated so the ashes of the American flag are combined with the ashes of the veteran as a sign of respect for their service.

While Shannon isn’t a veteran, she has relatives who are and felt this was an appropriate way to honor those who served our country so selflessly.

“It just felt like the right thing to do,” she said. “I have great pride in our flag and it’s another way to give a gift to a veteran that we don’t even know and to honor them one final time.”

The funeral home was very thankful for BrightView’s patriotic donation.

“We feel that families of veterans feel honored to have an American flag placed in with their loved one for their cremation as it is one last act of honor to the flag that they fought to protect,” said Jack Mitchell IV of Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home. “The donation of flags provided by Brightview will allow us to offer that service to families for some time to come. We appreciate BrightView’s commitment to our military veterans.”