Goshen Rotary seeks to honor the community’s heroes
Goshen. Proceeds from the service club’s “Flags for Heroes” fundraiser will benefit organizations ranging from the Goshen Food Pantry and Cornerstone Theatre Arts to GOVAC and the Hudson Valley Honor Flight program.
Goshen /
| 08 Oct 2024 | 07:18
More than 1,000 people and organizations have been recognized since the inaugural Goshen Rotary Flags For Heroes fundraiser in 2020. (
)
The Rotary Club of Goshen is hosting its fourth annual “Flags for Heroes” fundraiser to recognize the heroes in our lives.
Sponsor a flag and honor your personal hero, a friend, parent, child, community leader, mentor, teacher, member of the military, police, fire or other first responders and receive a commemorative medallion with your hero’s name.
The presentation ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 27, at the Charles J. Everett Memorial in the center of the village of Goshen.
The flags will be on display from Oct. 27 through Nov. 15.
The location fits hand in glove with the Rotary’s program. Everett, who is described online as simply as a “Citizen of Goshen,” designated money in his will for the creation of a memorial to the soldiers and sailors of Orange County who served in the Civil War. It was erected in 1917.
Since 2020 when the program started, approximately 1,000 people and organizations have had flags flown for them. Funds raised from these efforts have benefitted nearly a score of organizations and charities with ties to Goshen. The Rotary Club also gives more than $35,000 per year to local students going off to college.
“The flag,” said Mark Gargiulo, the Rotarian organizing “Flags for Heroes” effort, “represents this wonderful nation in good and bad times.”
Goshen Rotarians take pride in the placing the flags six feet apart in a grid with straight lines. The distance between flags was determined by the spacing requirements born out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The club has 250 flags; its members seek to increase the number people recognized to more than 300.
To sponsor a flag, send a completed form and a $50 check payable to The Rotary Club of Goshen, N.Y., P.O. Box 563, Goshen, N.Y. 10924, by Oct. 25.
The form can be found online at goshennyrotary.org.
“I think it’s important to mention,” Gargiulo added, “that these flags can be sponsored by anybody who wants to honor a hero. It does not have to be a veteran. It can be someone who is a nurse, a doctor, an organization – anybody in one’s life that they consider to be a hero.”