The Blue Star Mothers of Durango will honor fallen U.S. Military service members this Memorial Day weekend by flying five hundred American flags on the fields of Santa Rita Park.
The flags will fly from 9 a.m. Friday until 4 p.m. Monday.
The Durango Healing fields debuted last year when Phelia Smith, vice president of the Blue Star Mothers of Durango, proposed it as a fundraiser.
Each of the 500 flags represent a military personnel who died in service. Jill Williams, president of the Durango chapter, explained that flag sponsorships allow individuals and corporations to dedicate flags to their loved ones.
“Individual sponsorships are $100,” Williams said. “Corporate sponsorships have different levels, anywhere from $250 to $10,000.”
The fee includes the price of the flag and a dog tag that will be engraved with the name of the soldier to whom the flag is dedicated.
Smith estimates that between 4,000 and 5,000 people visited the flag display last year.
“Everybody knows somebody in the military,” Smith said. “Whether it's your neighbor's child, your child, whatever. (The flags) kind of bring us all together in a space (that allows us) to have communities but also to sit with one another.”
Last year, La Plata County commissioners sponsored a flag in honor of Jeff M. Kuss, a Blue Angels pilot and Durango native who died in a plane crash during a practice air show in June 2016.
Smith recalled talking to his parents at the Healing Fields.
“All they could speak of was the beauty that he had – the laughter, the joy,” Smith said. “And as they were speaking, all I could see was my own son. My heart broke.”
Williams explained that the goal of both the Healing Fields and the Blue Star Mothers is to create a space and community where people can come together and share their grief.
First formed in 1942, Blue Star Mothers are women who either have a son or daughter who is serving or has been honorably discharged from the Armed Forces of the United States. The organization came to Colorado almost two decades ago.
“We are CO1,” said Williams. “We were the first in Colorado.”
Williams first joined the Blue Star Mothers when her son was on active duty.
“It's a different world when your child is deployed,” Williams said. “You try to explain that to somebody who doesn't have an affiliation with the military and they just don't understand. We create a community where we can support one another.”
The Healing Fields provide an opportunity for that community to be extended.
“We can come together as a community in a place that's painful and be together,” Smith said.
lveress@durangoherald.com
