You’ve seen them. Those little red and white flags. As Memorial Day approaches, the little memorial flags from fire companies pop up on  lawns or any other fitting places to remember members who served and passed.

It’s a ritual. Every year fire company members set out to adorn graves with the small, yet very significant remembrance of their foregone members. There’s a small army and leader behind the meaningful memorials.

Fair Haven Fire Department member Larry Hartman, longtime leader of the memorial flag decorating, told the story of how it’s done:

Years ago, in the absence of GPS technology, maps and just asking relatives for directions to graves were the tools used. “When I started (in 1980) I was given a list of names and the cemetery they were buried in,” Hartman said. These records have remained with the fire company.

Now, Hartman says, technology makes things a bit easier.

With many of the Fair Haven members buried at Fairview, Mount Olivet and Little Silver cemeteries, the fire department, as a whole, goes out to those places to place the flags a couple of weeks before Memorial Day.

Hartman, who took the reins on the leadership of the flag placement in 1980 from an older member, says that his guess is that there are roughly 250 members buried in those three places.

He and another member travel about 500 miles throughout the rest of the state to other cemeteries where the remaining 50 or so members are buried to decorate their graves.

For those who are buried out of state or have family members who wish to have flags for other memorial sites, the family members are given flags.

This was Hartman’s final year of memorial flag duty, as he said he will be moving out of state next year.

“This year I took the pictures and GPS coordinates to help aid whoever it is that will take this over in my absence,” he said.

Thank you, Larry and the Fair Haven Fire Department for always remembering!