After several days of dreary, rainy weather, the sun came out to welcome Redmond’s new Flag City USA Monument.

An Oct. 19 event drew more than 75 people to the new $550,000 monument, located on the west side of Highway 97, just south of the intersection with SW Glacier and Highland avenues. Dignitaries and veterans raised United States, Oregon, Redmond and POW-MIA flags, as well as one celebrating Redmond’s designation as “Flag City USA.”

Two flagpoles are in the foreground, with three others behind a retaining wall. The wall includes emblems from service clubs like Kiwanis and the Military Order of the Purple Heart. Six smaller American flags were later raised, three on each end of the monument.

The event was the culmination of 25 years of work, for Randy Povey. It started when he organized drilling 180 holes in the sidewalk in 1991, in preparation to line Redmond roads with Americans flags during a parade to welcome home soldiers from Operation Desert Storm.

“Then the next thing was, ‘This worked so good, why don’t we try to form a committee?’ Which became the Downtown Redmond Flag Committee,” Povey, who remains the committee’s co-chairman, told the audience.

The committee helped grow the flag display to 1,450 flags. In 1999, Congress awarded Redmond the Flag City USA designation.

“He kind of started that whole program decades ago,” Deschutes County Commissioner Alan Unger, a former Redmond mayor, said of Povey. “He encouraged people to sponsor flags to fly over the Capitol, and worked with the Congressman to return them to Redmond.”

U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, entered the statement honoring Redmond as Flag City in the Congressional Record in 1999, adding that he knows no other city that matches its efforts to honor the flag and American pride.

At last week’s ceremony, Walden said he hopes the display reminds passersby of the sacrifices made by America’s military members to make freedom possible.

“To me, our great flag serves as a somber reminder of the struggles our country has endured,” he said. “It represents the obstacles we have overcome in our pursuit of freedom. And it shows great prosperity and hope for future generations of Americans and individuals and countries across the world.”

The city started planning the project a couple years ago, shortly after Highway 97 was rerouted, as part of an effort to beautify an area between the highway and Canal Drive that would be difficult to develop, Mayor George Endicott said. The idea for the monument came from the Flag Committee.

“What you see today is a culmination of a lot of that work,” he said.

A new pathway allows people to walk to the monument from downtown.

— Reporter: 541-548-2186, gfolsom@redmondspokesman.com