Alice Summerour was enjoying the Americans flags lining a street near the Big Chicken when she noticed something was wrong.
Summerour is a past president of the Marietta Kiwanis Club, which puts up those flags on countrywide holidays, so she knew two flags weren’t supposed to be on the sidewalk of Roswell Street.
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“I just pulled over and parked and thought surely there was a logical explanation for them to be down,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But instead, I found that someone had purposefully bent the poles.”
Then she saw black marker scrawlings on them.
“And that really made my heart sink.”
Jim Mallard, president-elect of the club, said they usually lose about 10 percent of the 1,600 flags they put out.
They placed the flags out for Labor Day and were going to keep them up for 9/11.
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Mallard said he’s been heckled more and more recently while putting up the flags.
“I think it’s gotten a bit worse since Trump got elected,” he said, adding that people confuse putting the flags out for a pro-Trump stance. “ ... I don’t know how you’d draw that conclusion.”
Mallard said the flags were back up and that they don’t expect to involve law enforcement. He said they’ll keep an eye on the area to make sure no more flags are defaced.
“People don’t appreciate what it represents,” he said.
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