My dad called the flag in front of our house, on the telephone pole, his flag. Every year he would come in all excited. “You know what happened today?” “What?” “My flag went up.”

His name was Francis Kenneth Edwards. Most people called him Ed or Finn. 

My father was a Marine who served in Vietnam. He wasn’t drafted. He enlisted, in Springfield, on Aug. 25, 1966, at 18 years old, and he served four years and came home with an honorable discharge. He was an aerial gunner in CH-46 helicopters, with Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364, flying into landing zones that weren’t secured, where the fire was coming in or could come in at any second. He flew 15 strike and flight missions from August of 1968 into January of 1969 that the Corps counted and decorated. The president of the United States put his name on the Air Medal for them — twice, the second one covering the second through the fifteenth — and the Corps gave him the Combat Aircrew Insignia with three stars. He came home with the Air Medal with numeral 15, the Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, a Presidential Unit Commendation, a Navy Unit Commendation, the Vietnam Service Medal with five stars, the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry, and the Vietnam Campaign Medal.

He never said one word about any of it. He was so quiet. He never talked about his medals. I’ve never seen them. My mother has never seen them. Somebody asked him once what he did for a living, all those years at the mill, and he said, “Papermaker, I guess. That’s about it.” He was a lodge man, like his father-in-law before him, and he never talked about that either. He just kept everything to himself. He did nothing but watch his old war movies, rocking in his chair. He was a dad. The war affected him. He never showed it. But he was proud of his flag.

Those flags went up for Memorial Day, and it is November. Some of them are tattered and torn, wrapped around the poles. One of them was on the ground, in the dirt. That one was by my house.

I wanted to memorialize my dad after he passed, and I was so happy they had built this wall. One of the last things he ever did was take his granddaughter to Charter Day. It’s about loving his legacy. That’s why I was so disheartened to see the flags in such tattered shape.

Tanya Edwards is a licensed practical nurse who lives in Granby. Her father, Francis “Ed” Edwards, was a U.S. Marine who served in Vietnam.