Rachel Renbarger doesn’t remember much about her 15 minutes of fame when at age 9 she became a role model for adults in general and politicians in particular.
She had helped paint Old Glory on her Duluth neighborhood street as part of the Fourth of July 2005 celebration. Almost six months later, a controversy erupted over whether the painting violated the rules of etiquette governing images of the flag and the city graffiti law.
Harsh words were exchanged. E-mails rocketed among the mayor, City Council members and the veteran city administrator, who had to tell them the painting was illegal.
The controversy came to a head at a City Council meeting. Some who were there remember Rachel’s words that night and are still grateful for them.
As council members debated whether a painted star-spangled banner was graffiti, Rachel stepped up and calmed the waters by saying she would remove it. The moment made her the face of personal responsibility in the Gwinnett County city of 22,000. She was interviewed by CBS’ “The Early Show,” “Fox and Friends” and “Geraldo.”
“I had forgotten how big of a deal it was,” the now 15-year-old Duluth High School sophomore said last month. “I remember coming home from school one day and there were a bunch of messages on our phone from news reporters who wanted to interview me. To me that was just incredible, and I didn’t expect that at all.”
It was an uncomfortable and contentious moment politically and culturally. After all, Duluth puts up hundreds of flags each Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day; the city promotes itself as the patriotic center of the universe; and Rachel’s flag was in then-Mayor Shirley Lasseter’s Howell Woods/Whitney Park neighborhood.
Complicating the matter further was a World War II prisoner of war, Don Ogden, who along with national veterans groups had called the painting disrespectful because it could be tread on.
“It was an emotional kind of thing,” said City Administrator Phil McLemore. “Her standing up and saying that and taking responsibility when the adults wouldn’t.”
Today Rachel is a typical high school student. She likes theater, music and literature. Art, she said, is not her forte.
Memories of the controversy have faded.
“She was definitely not looking for the limelight,” said her mother, Jill Renbarger. “The most frightening memory is of being on a field trip with Rachel’s class and getting a call from my neighbor who said, ‘An ABC truck is parked out in front of your house and they’re not leaving until you get home.’ ”
The controversy ended with flags being mailed to Rachel from well-wishers in the United States and from a sergeant in the National Guard from Griffin who was then in Iraq. The Ogdens had the Renbargers over for dinner and cards. They have since lost touch.
Rachel used to see Lasseter, now a Gwinnett County commissioner, at the neighborhood Independence Day parade. The flag controversy never came up, and Lasseter has since moved.
The family was touched by the outpouring of support for Rachel during the controversy. The reaction apparently helped impress on Rachel the importance of integrity and owning up to mistakes. “Rachel has demonstrated that ever since,” said her father, Randy Renbarger.
But what most struck the family at the time was the passion expressed by people on both sides of the controversy, Renbarger said.
“Sometimes we take the flag as a symbol of the nation for granted and we don’t get the passion,” he said. “It ingrained in us that we live in a great country and the flag means more than we often understand.”
All about ordinances
It had all started out innocently. Rachel and her sister Leah, then 7, under the supervision of a neighbor and other adults, painted the stripes the night before the Fourth, and they and dozens of neighborhood children finished the large and near-perfect flag following the end of the neighborhood’s Fourth of July parade.
It had been a joyous moment, with each child painting a star. But months later, a neighbor, who viewed the painting as a symbol of support for the Iraq War, was angry the flag was still there. He contacted McLemore about the violation of the graffiti ordinance.
Neighborhood adults asked the City Council to make an exception. The mayor was coming down hard on the side of patriotism, McLemore said, despite the warning that if the ordinance wasn’t enforced equitably, the city might be hobbled from stopping political messages that might be more controversial.
Someone could decorate a city wall with a mural of Karl Marx. A Nazi sympathizer could draw a swastika.
City Councilman Doug Mundrick said he believed the council knew it had to enforce the ordinance. Still, nobody wanted to be the politician who voted to destroy an image of the flag.
He remembered the January 2006 meeting as tense and packed with constituents, most of whom wanted the painting untouched, a handful who wanted it erased, and Ogden, who was telling them to show some respect.
Rachel then stepped into the fray. Walking up to the council members, her lip trembling slightly, she said that she and her parents and Leah had researched flag etiquette, along with the city graffiti law, and found themselves in violation.
She turned to Ogden, and in tears apologized to him, winning the 81-year-old vet’s admiration and affection.
“I am so sorry,” said Rachel, her voice cracking. “We will do whatever it takes to remove it — me and my sister. I am so sorry.”
The mayor, the City Council and Ogden all assured her she had done nothing wrong.
To Mundrick and McLemore, Rachel’s words defused the moment.
“In my career that was one of the things I will always remember,” said Mundrick, who is retiring this year from the council. “We were in a really tough predicament, and I felt that the way she volunteered up, it made the community say, ‘This girl’s right.’
“I think she embarrassed everybody.”
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