BY KENDYL HOLLINGSWORTH
KENDYLH@OPELIKAOBSERVER.COM
AUBURN —
For those looking to take their observation of patriotic holidays a step further, one local Scout BSA troop is offering a special flag service to residents of Auburn and Opelika.
Troop 19’s “Flags Over Auburn” is a subscription service in which scouts will post an American flag in your yard and retire it before dusk on five national flag-flying days.
“It’s a small thing, but it’s on really important days,” said Claudia Mattingly, an Eagle Scout and former troop member.
For $50, scouts will take care of everything needed to post the flag so that the subscriber need only admire the view. The process includes installing a plastic sleeve in the yard, capping it and marking the curb or street in front of it with the BSA fleur-de-lis logo. The sleeve and cap are installed flush with the ground so they will not interfere with mowing. On flag days, scouts will post a 3-foot-by-5-foot nylon U.S. flag on a 10-foot pole in the sleeve and retire the flag before dusk.
The cost to subscribe for one full year is $50. A subscriber’s service will begin on the first flag-flying holiday after signing up. If there is severe weather on one of the five holidays, Troop 19 will post and retire flags on Sept. 11.
For Claudia, a strong advocate of Scouts BSA, Flags Over Auburn was just one part of the fun of being in Troop 19.
“I did Cub Scouts with my brother — I participated as a sibling — and I fell in love with the program, and I was really upset that I couldn’t join, so the second they did let me join, I took that opportunity,” Claudia said.
At the request of their daughters, Scoutmaster Joe Mattingly and Assistant Scoutmaster Kevin Harp established Troop 19 — the area’s first all-girl Scouts BSA troop — soon after Boy Scouts of America announced it would begin allowing girls to join in 2019 and earn an Eagle rank. The troop began with seven scouts and has grown from there.
“It’s been a complete blast,” Joe said.
Since the troop’s inception about four and a half years ago, Joe said it has done the familiar popcorn and camp card fundraisers, but with so many troops in the area doing similar fundraisers, Troop 19 decided to come up with a new way to fundraise in 2022.
“We were looking for a different way to do a fundraiser — something that was different,” Joe recalled. “I found a troop up in Waynesboro, Indiana, that did this program called Flags Over Waynesboro.”
Joe reached out to ask permission to start up a similar program in the Auburn area, and the Waynesboro troop’s leaders not only granted permission but sent Troop 19 the information they used to start up their program.
Thus, Flags Over Auburn was born. About a year later, Joe said there are over 20 subscribers in the community and counting.
“We’re hoping that at some point, this will grow to the size where we can almost completely offset the cost to the scouts,” he said. “… While scouting is a lot of fun, it can get rather pricey. You figure the fees for camping and the uniform and the badges and the patches and everything else that goes along with it — the travel, and the food for camping trips and all that — it starts to add up.”
In addition to being the scoutmaster for Troop 19, Joe is also an assistant scoutmaster for Troop 11 — his son’s troop. He said he hopes there will be a need in the future for both troops to participate in the fundraising service.
And while there are no plans to extend the service to other communities within Lee County, Joe said he isn’t opposed to sharing the idea with troops that do serve those areas.
“I think it’s a great idea, and we’ve gotten a lot of positive response for it,” he said, noting the praise and pictures he has seen on social media from subscribers.
“Scouting as a whole is giving back to the community,” Claudia added. “So even if it’s just a small thing like putting up a flag for a day a couple times a year, it’s just rewarding to be giving back to the community.”
For more information on Troop 19 and its Flags Over Auburn service, or to subscribe, visit troop19auburn.org.