A disgusted Edgecomb Fire Chief Roy Potter blasted selectmen June 3 over what he saw at a local cemetery Memorial Day morning: tattered, faded flags on veterans' graves.

“It's disrespectful …. This shouldn't happen, not in our town,” Potter said. “It's just unspeakable.”

Potter went up to the selectmen's table and laid out an armload of the flags, some with little cloth remaining. He found them at Highland Cemetery, when he went to visit his daughter's grave, he said.

Selectmen divvy up flag duties among themselves for the various cemeteries in town. Selectman Stuart Smith said he and son Alex planned to put the new flags up at Highland Cemetery prior to Memorial Day, but it was raining.

Every year, he and his son look forward to reading the gravestones and finding those that belong to veterans, Smith said in an interview. But when they arrived at town hall around mid-morning Memorial Day, the flags weren't there.

The two searched the building for them and later learned Potter had picked them up.

Potter said after he saw the old flags on the graves, he had reached Selectman Jack Sarmanian, then picked up the new flags himself and taken them to the cemetery.

“I didn't get up early enough, I guess,” Smith said during Monday night's meeting.

In the interview later, Smith shared his family history of service in World War II. One uncle fought the Germans, another the Japanese; his mother served in the Red Cross and his father was an Army medic who was involved in burying soldiers' bodies, Smith said.

“To this day, he can't listen to taps,” Smith said of his father. “I have the utmost respect for people who have served.”

The selectman said that when he found out Potter had taken the flags to distribute them, “I kind of felt put off by it.”

Potter, who served 20 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, urged selectmen to  find a way to ensure no one else ever has to feel what he and his parents felt at the sight of the weathered flags.

Instead of selectmen handling the flag duties, maybe the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts could take part, the board's secretary Jen Elkins suggested. Potter's father John Potter, also of Edgecomb, liked that idea. “It would give them a little learning, about respecting the flag,” he said.

Resident Jarryl Larson offered to help get a list of veterans' graves up-to-date and verify the graves' locations. “I'd be more than willing to do that,” she said.

Selectman Jessica Chubbuck said a committee might also be helpful,  both in May and in the fall, when the flags could be taken down before snow sets in.

In the future, the new flags could be placed more in advance of Memorial Day, to allow time to work around weather or other potential holdups, Chubbuck said.

She has lost friends in the Iraq War and can understand why people would be upset about the flags' condition, she said.

Smith said he appreciates people wanting to help with the flags; but there's been a history of people stepping up for one year then not doing it again, he said. “That's why it always comes back to the selectmen.”

Court to get tax incentive issue

The board will ask a court to determine who the town should be making tax incentive payments to, developer Roger Bintliff or the Bank of Maine, Chubbuck said.

Last year, Bintliff said he should be getting the payments now that he owes the bank no money. Under a 2009 deal, the bank had been getting the payments.

The tax incentives were set up years ago when Bintliff's company Edgecomb Development was going to pay for some utilities on Davis Island.

Susan Johns can be reached at 207-844-4633 or sjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com