Custom Gold Star service flag to be unveiled in October.
An Illinois county is gaining a clearer picture of its Gold Star natives through a history project years in the making.
In 2012, Mark Hutson of Cedarburg, Wis., bought a World War II service flag at a farm auction. “As I researched its history,” the Army veteran says, “I came to understand the profound impact these flags had on families and communities in our country who had loved ones serving in wartime.” He began building a collection of service flags from World War I on that also includes photographs and even flag-related sheet music.
As the collection grew, so did the stories of individuals and families that came with them. Hutson took the items on the road, displaying them and giving historical talks in communities around Wisconsin and Illinois, and presented current service flags to families.
Hutson is a member of Post 288 in Cedarburg. While doing research on the flags he had obtained, he found “common knowledge” inaccuracies and missing records from the register of McHenry County in northern Illinois – and that there was no single repository for the stories of the county’s fallen servicemembers. So he decided to change that.
In addition to the losses that can happen to individual records over time, larger catastrophes can affect access – such as the July 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis that destroyed 16-18 million Official Military Personnel Files of veterans of the Army, Army Air Force and Air Force who served from 1912-1963, according to DVIDS. There had been no copies of these records made or indexes created, leaving veterans, survivors and the government to reconstruct service histories as best they can since.
Hutson set about creating the McHenry County Gold Star Legacies project as that single public repository, now online. He digitized and archived files wherever he could find them and did additional primary source – firsthand accounts or physical artifacts – research on the deceased servicemembers. He ultimately found 295, from World War I through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; the two most recent losses were in 2012. One of the main goals of the project is “to ensure every fallen servicemember from McHenry County is remembered with accuracy, dignity and permanence.” Listings include date and place of birth and death, rank, photos, links to graves or cemeteries, and even downloadable ZIP files with primary source information.
Austin May is an Army veteran and member of Post 491 in the town of McHenry, and has written dozens of the Gold Star biographies. He met Hutson earlier this year after being introduced by a mutual friend; “His enduring passion for the project was apparent,” he says, “and I had no choice but to join in on the spot.” In addition to his writings, he is working on government support and sponsorship. One of May’s top priorities is getting this information in front of the next generations of county residents: “These stories can teach us all so much, because these men and women are really not so different from you and I. But even more importantly, the lessons and sacrifices here will teach the next generation so much. If we can help young people learn that as they shape the future, then we have succeeded.”
During the American Legion Department of Illinois convention in June, Hutson and May brought numerous items from Hutson’s collection and gave a talk. May calls Post 491 and William Chandler Peterson Post 171 in Crystal Lake “instrumental” in supporting and advocating for the project.
The goal of permanent remembrance will come from not just the project’s online presence but a special 8-foot-by-5-foot county service flag, which Hutson calls the first of its kind, with 295 stars and their conflicts embroidered on that will “visually connect the community to its fallen.” On July 21, a resolution was passed to designate the county itself as a Gold Star Community ahead of an Oct. 3 Gold Star Remembrance Day event in Crystal Lake. There, McHenry County will be introduced to what Hutson calls “a flag that tells a story star by star.”
- Honor & Remembrance