Wanted: a home near downtown Lake Forest for two trailers filled with 300 American flags.
American Legion Post 264 installs flags in a roughly 16-block area during seven holidays: Flag Day, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Lake Forest Day, July 4 and Sept. 11. The veterans took over putting up flags in 1958 when downtown merchants stopped the practice.
“(The merchants’ flags) didn’t provide much uniformity,” said Gary Simmons, adjutant commander of Post 264. “The flags would be less than presentable or of different sizes.”
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For the last several years, Post 264 has stored those flags in the old city yards, a storage facility at Laurel and Western used for parking large trucks and storing other items. The city is now in the process of demolishing the facility to make way for a residential development.
About two weeks ago, post members moved their trailers to Dickenson Hall, the senior center on the west side of Lake Forest. That site is temporary — the post has committed to finding a new home for the flags, hopefully by July 4 — and the location is problematic due to the almost 40-year-old trailers.
“The trailers are not really built for doing highway speeds,” Simmons said. “We use local streets to get them to different locations, streets that are less than 35 mph.”
The trailers are open on top, so inside storage is needed. The Legion building doesn’t have facilities.
American Legion Post 264 would like someone to volunteer two slots in a garage somewhere near downtown. Ideally, the garage would have an overhead door of ten feet or higher (the flags stick up over the edge of the trailers) so the flags don’t have to be unloaded and reloaded each time the trailers enter or exit.
Post 264 may be contacted at (847) 234-9870.