Veteran’s Voices: The Girl Scouts and a local waste site team up to properly retire flags

BECKLEY, WV (WVNS) – American flags are flown loud and proud throughout the nation and the world, but they are not immortal.

Like all other material items, time and weather wears on its colors and fabric.

Travis Kiblinger is the executive director for the Raleigh County Solid Waste Authority. He wanted his waste site to become a home for flags that need retired.

“So back in 2021, on Pearl Harbor Day, we implemented a flag drop off area. It is free to the public. We take in any retired U.S. flags and, in conjunction with the Girl Scouts and other organizations, we do a proper flag retirement ceremony,” said Kiblinger.

Bettie Worley is the Service Unit Administrator of Raleigh County for the Girls Scouts of Black Diamond Council.

She said her girl scouts hold flag retirement ceremonies with all the flags from the drop off area on the second Sunday of every month at 4:30 p.m.

“The first thing you do when you take the flag is you take off the grommets, then you separate the field of blue, and then you separate the stripes. The reason you separate it is – for respect and so that when you put the flag into the fire that we are going to be retiring it into. You are not burning a flag; you are retiring the pieces of the flag,” said Worley.

Flag retirement is considered a silver project – which is the highest award that her cadet girl scouts can achieve. Cadet girl scouts are middle schoolers.

Worley said her girls worked tirelessly to raise money and construct everything at the Raleigh County Solid Waste Authority flag retirement site. They built everything from benches to the pergola, down to the firepit itself.

Worley recounted one specific instance that revealed how these flag retirements have impacted her girls.

“The flag needed to be retired and they just, like, were folding into a little square thing and it just did not work for them. They were like, ‘Bettie, let’s go over there and let us fix that for them. We need to fix that.’ We went over, and we folded the flag, and it touched my heart because they did see that what we are doing is meaningful,” said Worley.

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