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Inverness VFW Chief Sees Both Sides Of Flag Flap

News Channel 8 photo by JOHN WINTERROWD

According to the city, flags are considered decorative objects and cannot be placed on a gravesite for longer than 90 days.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 11, 2008

Inverness is rich with military veterans who have chosen this area to retire, fish for lunker bass in the Tsala Apopka chain of lakes, or play golf or hoist a cold brew at the Eugene Quinn VFW Post 4337.

The post, which has 580 members, is alive today with Veterans Days activities, a parade, commemorations and an eye on the controversy surrounding the grave of Robert Surber, an Army sergeant and Inverness native killed in action in Iraq last year.

The controversy is this: Flags surrounding the grave in the city's cemetery, even though patriotic, are against the rules.

Surber's family has placed American flags all around the grave. The city says rules prohibit such decoration. The flag flap coincidentally happened just before Veterans Day.

VFW Post 4337 Commander Steve McElveen said this morning that the whole issue "got blown out of proportion."

He sees both sides: The family should be able to commemorate Surber's call to duty and his death overseas, but the city has rules, too.

"I think they should be able to have an American flag there," he said. "But even in national cemeteries, there are only certain times you can have them up.

"I understand them [the family] wanting to remember," he said. "No one should forget, quite frankly. Especially on Veterans Day or on holidays or on his birthday, a small American flag is appropriate."

Even on days like today, he said, national cemeteries only allow one flag to fly on graves.

Flags make maintenance of graves more difficult, he said, "plus they fall down, get old."

Surber, who graduated from Citrus High School, enlisted in 2002 and was sent to Iraq in 2006. He was killed June 3, 2007, when a bomb exploded near his vehicle. The blast also killed three other U.S. soldiers.

Surber lies in the city-maintained Oak Ridge Cemetery, where flags recently began to appear. Many flags have sprouted, about 20 of them this week.

City officials said that is not allowed.

"This is not a flag issue," Pati Smith, of the Inverness Parks and Recreation Department, told News Channel 8 this week. "We're enforcing the rules and regulations the best we can pertaining to that cemetery. Nobody's perfect. You have to respect everyone that's out there."

Flags are considered decorative objects, she said, and cannot be placed on a gravesite longer than 90 days.

Surber's mother, Kerri, strongly objects to the rules.

"That we had to take the American flags from my son who gave his life for this country, I just didn't believe it. I couldn't understand why they asked us to do that," she said. "The one thing I have left of my son they want to take away from me."

News Channel 8 reporter Samara Sodos contributed to this report. Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760.

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