SANDY — There are flags of all shapes and sizes inside the Colonial Flag store, but it's the flag being made in a back room that's getting all the buzz.
Everyone seems to have a different reaction to seeing the red, white and blue.
For Kyle Fox, with the organization Follow the Flag, it's pretty powerful. "I wasn't a soldier, but I'd do anything for a soldier,” he said.
He figured the display they started working on Friday is the best way to pass that on. "It's the biggest flag that we know of," he said.
The organization believes it will be the largest American flag ever flown.
The flag that the organization is having made will fly between the two peaks at Grove Canyon in Pleasant Grove, and it will be enormous — around a quarter of an acre.
“I’m having a hard time sleeping at night just thinking about this thing,” Fox said.
But it's not so much about the size as what's going into it and who's helping: Gail Halvorsen, better known as “The Candy Bomber.” The 96-year-old was recognized in March in the Utah Senate for his act of compassion toward the people of Germany in the aftermath of World War II.
Halvorsen was assigned to fly in supplies during the Berlin Airlift at the end of World War II. Upon noticing a group of children watching the supplies come, he decided to give them the pieces of gum he had in his pocket in hopes it would give them some small comfort. The German children appreciated his actions, and it was from that moment that Halvorsen decided to spread his service by dropping even more candy — by parachute — to the waiting children.
There was one moment during the war that a flag really touched Halvorsen. He was at a harbor full of Russian ships in St. Petersburg.
“In the midst of those ships as we walked further along was an American destroyer. On the top of the mast flew an American flag, right in the middle of those Soviet flags,” Halvorsen said. “To see that flag fluttering in the breeze that day in St. Petersburg, Russia, it stirred my heart.”
This flag will mean a lot to him, too. Friday, he sewed the first stitches on the first 5-foot star going on the flag.
“To sew part of it and put a few safety pins in to prepare it for sewing, it’s a thrill I’ll never forget,” Halvorsen said.
The organizers hope each person who sees this flag unfurled in Grove Creek Canyon on Independence Day will get that feeling, too.
“We just don’t want to tell a story,” Fox said. “We want you to feel it.”
Contributing: Viviane Vo-Duc