Proud of his nation’s colors.
In case you didn’t realize, today (June 14) is Flag Day, which commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States back in 1777.
And Dillon Carmichael is doing his best to keep the stars and stripes flying in his neighborhood.
Back in 2020, the nephew of John Michael Montgomery and Eddie Montgomery made the offer with a simple Facebook post after he moved into his own home and hung an American flag, then realized that there were many houses nearby that either didn’t have a flag or was flying one that needed replaced.
We caught up with Dillon ahead of his performance at Country Fest in North Lawrence, Ohio today to talk to him about what inspired him to spread the red, white and blue in his own neighborhood:
“I was standing outside the house one day and I was like, ‘You know what this house needs is a flag.’ So I go buy myself a flag and I hang it on my front porch and I’m just standing there admiring it because it’s stunningly beautiful…
So after that I was driving around the rest of the town and I was seeing houses that either didn’t have flags or they had a flagpole with no flag on it, or even flags that were torn up and had blown down in a storm or whatever, and I was like, ‘People don’t fly the flag like they used to, like I remember when I was growing up in small town Kentucky.’”
Well Dillon posted a message on Facebook offering to hang a flag for free for anyone who wanted one – and the response was overwhelming:
“I got hit one after the other, almost instantly, people reaching out, which was super cool…
Sometimes they’d just come out and pop their head out the door and say, ‘Thank you so much,’ and sometimes I’d get in a good conversation with them and talk for hours.”
Back during COVID, Dillon said he would spend all day while out hanging flags – but also getting to meet his neighbors in the process:
“I met some of the coolest people. I met a bunch of veterans. I met widows and widowers, young couples – that’s exciting when you see young couples that are wanting to hang an American flag. Sometimes it can be lost on them.
It was super cool just to get to talk to all these people and see their passion for our country, and it just lit a fire inside of me to do this.”
Of course now that Dillon’s been back out on the road he doesn’t get to do it as much as he would like, but he’s still got big plans for his initiative to hang flags:
“My goal is to pick a date this summer, and go out and have a group flag hanging, and have everybody come in…
I’ve realized the more people who know about it, the more people that might be inspired by it and want to do it themselves in their hometowns. I can only do so much, but it’s one small step in the right direction.
I still believe we live in the greatest country in the world…I think that sometimes there’s a few folks that maybe have forgotten that about, and I love to see patriotism alive and well, and it really bothers me when it’s not. So it’s just one small step in the right direction.”
Since starting his initiative, Dillon says he’s probably hung 50 flags in his community, and his local Ace Hardware has even started donating the flags. And according to Dillon, there are plenty of special interactions he’s had along the way:
“There was a veteran named Larry, and he was a veteran that was a widower. And I showed up…and this man has lived in this little bitty house on this piece of land for so long. Everything in this house was from 1974.
And I hung this flag for him, and next thing I knew I sat with this dude for 3 hours, just talking about the most unbelievable things, talked about his wife and his kids and the amazing things that’s happened in his life, and the tragic things that happened in his life.
He was in his 90s, and it reminded me a lot of home when I was a kid growing up in a small town. It was really refreshing.”
It’s pretty amazing to see how a small gesture like that can not only help people show off their pride in the greatest country in the world, but also help bring members of a community together. And hopefully, as Dillon said, it’s something that can maybe inspire others to do it in their community too.
Because if you ask me, you can never have too much red, white and blue.
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