HATFIELD — American flags lined Main Street this week in memory of the late Leonard Von Flatern Jr., a longtime Hatfield resident, former State Police colonel, veteran and family man who started the town’s tradition of hanging flags on holidays over 30 years ago.
“Lenny would actually inspect every flag as they came down and got put up to make sure they were not frayed or dirty,” said Gerry Clark, a veterans’ services agent for the town, and a close friend to Von Flatern. “He stored them and inspected them all.”
With the help of another close friend, Stanley “Buster” Symanski, owner of M&S Electric, Von Flatern would hang dozens of flags along Main Street on major holidays, Veterans Day and Memorial Day. Symanski let Von Flatern borrow his company’s bucket truck and a couple of employees to do the job.
“The tradition was to let the people know that we’re honoring the veterans on that particular day and we do it several times year,” Symanski said.
Not only did Von Flatern keep up the flag-hanging tradition, he started it. He took it upon himself to work with the town to find the funds to purchase the flags over 30 years ago and had cared for them ever since.
A Coast Guard veteran who served in the Korean War, Von Flatern remained a committed member of the American Legion Post 344 until his death. He joined the Massachusetts State Police in 1956, and rose through the ranks to become a lieutenant colonel, overseeing all field operations by officers throughout the state. After leaving the service, he became chief security officer for Kollmorgen Corp. in Northampton from 1981 to 1997.
“He raised his kids on a trooper’s salary and sent them to college on a colonel’s salary,” his daughter Cynthia Von Flatern said at the memorial on Thursday.
After a brief battle with pancreatic cancer, 85-year-old Von Flatern passed away at Hospice of the Fisher Home in Amherst on Christmas Eve. He spent his final days surrounded by friends and family, making sure he shared his final words with loved ones.
“He was a close friend to many people and loved by everybody in town,” Clark said. “He knew everybody, and he touched their lives in one way or another.”
On Wednesday evening, a wake for Von Flatern was held at the Ahearn Funeral Home in Northampton, and on Thursday friends and family filled the parish at Our Lady of Grace for a memorial service. Von Flatern’s casket was carried in draped with an American flag, and fellow veterans and state police officers filed into the church in uniform.
Echoing the dutiful way he cared for his loved ones, Cynthia Von Flatern listed the many responsibilities her father assumed in addition to hanging the town flags. Planning hunting and fishing trips, delivering firewood to his six grandchildren, perusing yard sales for the best deals, and keeping up with the intimate details of everyone’s lives were jobs he cherished.
“He had a penchant for finding himself in the thick of things,” she said.
Hatfield is an especially patriotic town, Symanski said, with farming and military families who go back generations. In 1959, Von Flatern married Helen Szawlowski of the longtime Hatfield farming family. Together they raised two children, Cynthia and Leonard Von Flatern III, in their 59 years of marriage.
“Hatfield is a hardworking farming community and a lot of the people, when the time called for it, they had to go into service,” Symanski said.
Symanski says he will continue the flag-hanging tradition in honor of his close friend. They knew each other for nearly half a century and were neighbors who lived less than a mile from each other on the corner of Elm Court and Elm Street. Still using the company bucket truck, Symanski now sends three employees out to hang the flags that line Main Street. On Wednesday before the wake, they hung the flags in Von Flatern’s honor.
The Rev. Robert J. Coonan led the memorial service and shared his memories of Von Flatern in his elder years when he drove the bus for young students attending religious classes at the church. Coonan said Von Flatern cared for the children so much, that he remembered the smallest details about their lives down to the items they forgot on his bus.
“He loved our Lord Jesus and served him well, even in the most challenging of circumstances,” Coonan said.
Von Flatern’s granddaughter Caroline Emery shared some of her memories at the service on Thursday, too.
“Christmas dinners, were always filled with grandpa explaining what a fine looking piece of meat it was, and him checking to make sure Mom was cooking it right,” she said.
For Christmas this year, she said, the family made Von Flatern’s favorite lobster casserole in his memory, and shared fond memories of their annual lobstering trips on Cape Cod.
An avid hunter, fisherman, and craftsman, Von Flatern kept busy with activities that allowed him to spend time with his family and friends or help them in any way he could, his family members said. He was known for his love of tag sales, keeping an eye out for anything someone he knew might want or need. He would make homemade mousetraps, custom buckets that hung around his grandchildren’s necks for blueberry picking, and special socks to keep his ankles warm in his later years. He especially enjoyed driving around with Helen and his “seventh grandchild,” Oliver, the couple’s dog.
Von Flatern loved his six grandchildren, watching them grow and supporting their many different endeavors. Coonan said a key word to describe Von Flatern was “service” because he lived to serve his family, community, country and God. Coonan remembered Von Flatern had the honor of serving as a bodyguard for Pope John Paul II when he visited Boston in 1979, and approached everything in his life with a similar sense of duty, especially hanging the flags.
“He was truly a family man,” Coonan said. “He did many, many things to help them grow.”
A former director of the Three County Fair until his death, Von Flatern’s family encourages all donations in his memory to be made to the Three County Fair Association or charity.
“He was truly a man who lived life to the fullest, and we can all honor his memory by doing the same,” Emery said.
Sarah Robertson can be reached at srobertson@gazettenet.com