Kennewick’s First Service Flag Flies
A local garage honors its employees serving in the Great War with a new emblem of community pride.
The story, cleaned up
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The Kennewick Garage is the first business house in Kennewick to display a service flag. The emblem, which was displayed in the window this week, bears two stars signifying that two men from the garage are now with the colors. The two former employees are Jack Copeland, of the 346th Field Artillery at Camp Lewis, and Charles Leitch, of the non-flying section of the signal corps, at Fort Lawton. The flag was ordered by the Kennewick Clothing company, who will be pleased to order flags for anyone who may wish them at actual cost. Mr. Feuchtwanger has asked Supt. M. S. Lewis for the number of former high school students now in the service and expects to present the high school with a large service flag.
“The emblem, which was displayed in the window this week, bears two stars signifying that two men from the garage are now with the colors.”
Service flags were a ubiquitous sight in 1917, marking the domestic toll of the Great War. Today, while we no longer mark military service with window flags, the practice reflects a similar tension between local business pride and the global scale of modern conflicts that still pull residents from communities like Kennewick.
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