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Coronavirus CT News: Connecticut man honors veterans, frontline workers with homemade flags

ByEyewitness News WABC logo

Monday, May 25, 2020

CT man honors veterans, frontline workers with homemade flags

An American flag on a front porch on Memorial Day is not an unusual sight, but at one home in Connecticut, it doesn't take long to realize these flags are different.

DARIEN, Connecticut (WABC) -- An American flag on a front porch on Memorial Day is not an unusual sight, but at one home in Connecticut, it doesn't take long to realize these flags are different.

Robert Carley, of Darien, spent the last two months during the COVID-19 lockdown creating the flags from things most of us would toss in the garbage.

"It's really a one-of-a-kind thing," he said. "I don't think anyone's made a flag out of coffee cup lids and tabs from Kleenex boxes, tape cassettes, toilet tubes."

He collected the objects,, painstakingly painted them, and then assembled the flags on his front porch and in his yard -- no egg crate or milk carton wasted.

"Each flag is different, with a different shape," he said. "I think they look good together, the variety, it works."

The colorful and unexpected display has understandably attracted the attention of neighbors and passing cyclists

"The closer you get to it, the more you're in awe of it, right?" one passerby said.

But the artist says there's also a message here. He intends it not only as a tribute to the nation's war dead, but also to modern day heroes.

"People on the frontline of this war against COVID-19, nurses, doctors, health care workers who actually passed away trying to help other people," he said. "It's my little way of using my creativity to honor these people."