Joe BargerThe flags and crosses honoring fallen veterans from Catoosa County are up from one side of Ringgold to the other, just in time for the crowds coming to 1890’s Day Jamboree over Memorial Day weekend.
That pleases Joe Barger, who spent nearly five decades working with the local Veterans of Foreign Wars on the program honoring deceased members of the military born in Catoosa County.
The memorial started with a single flag on the Catoosa County Courthouse. This year, volunteers draped the city with more than 1,700 flags and crosses which will remain up through May 31. The memorial will be put up again for the week before and after Veterans Day.
“It just means so much to so many people,” the 89-year-old Barger said as he sat, walker at his side, just a few blocks from where the flags fly. ” Volunteers who build the crosses are so careful because of what it means to the families.”
Barger retired in 2016 after 40 years as mayor of Ringgold. He started working on the flags before he was mayor, when he was just a councilman.
Nearly five decades as an elected official in a small town – why would he do it?
“I still wonder,” he chuckled.
Barbara, his wife of 63 years, suggests it might have been a parenting strategy for their two children.
“My children didn’t like it at all when they were growing up because they couldn’t do a blame thing without getting told on,” she said.
Recounting important people, good and bad, is difficult for Barger. He starts naming a list of individuals and then stops.
“You know, when it comes right down to it, that person just has to be Barbara,” he said.
Events are a bit easier. Barger lists securing the deed to the historic Ringgold Depot as an important milestone for the city. And then there was the time he laid sewer pipe because the county health department refused to condemn land which he said “had a pile of stuff sitting there bigger than this house.” And who could forget the tornado that killed eight people in Ringgold in 2011?
“There was just much to be done,” Barger said, reflecting on that traumatic event, which turned into a community-builder. “At the moment it was over there was just so much to do. But we did it. We had to.”
It’s the same message with the Memorial display of flags and crosses.
“There was always so much that had to get done to make sure the flags and crosses were ready, and the volunteers and people were always there to step up and help,” he said.
Email Davis Lundy at davislundy@aol.com.