Veterans, activists end Waterville flag flap

WATERVILLE – A flap over a display of 2,000 white flags by anti-war activists has ended on a peaceful – and colorful – note.

The Waterville park where the white flags had been placed in remembrance of America’s war dead in Iraq is now sprinkled with the stars and stripes too.

With no fanfare, about a dozen members of veterans’ groups and one Bridges for Peace member planted more than 2,000 American flags beside the white ones on Wednesday.

“I just thought it would be a way to sort of calm things down, with all the rhetoric” of recent days, said Samuel Shapiro of Waterville, a World War II veteran and member of two veterans’ groups who helped plant the American flags at the Veterans Memorial Park.

On Nov. 10, the eve of Veterans Day, five members of an area Veterans of Foreign Wars post were arrested on criminal trespass charges after they defied police orders and began tearing up the white flags planted by peace activists.

The veterans said they saw the flags as signs of retreat and surrender, while those who put them there said white is the color of war memorials. The VFW was deciding what disciplinary action should be taken against the five.

Arne Springorum, project chairman for the group that had placed the white flags in the park, had expressed interest in a dialogue with the veterans’ groups after the removal of the white flags and ensuing arrests.

On Wednesday, Springorum was passing by the park when he saw the veterans placing American flags in the park and asked to join them, according to Vietnam-era veteran Bill Lord.

“Isn’t that awesome?” Lord said, adding that it was “the very thing that we had hoped would occur, which was a dialogue, instead of a conflict.”

Springorum said, “I was just happy that we could do that together.”