June 13, 2026joynealkidney

My Flag Day story

Since Flag Day (June 14) fell on a Sunday the year I submitted “Why the American Flag was Precious to Grandma,” it was published by The Des Moines Sunday Register on the front page of the Opinion section, overarched by an American flag, in color.  June 14, 2020

It is included in Chapter 11: Holidays in The Immigrant and the Outlaw. Here’s how it begins:

“Since 1916 we Americans have officially celebrated the Stars and Stripes each June 14.

     “The American flag was precious to my grandmother. One of my favorite pictures of her is under a flag at my parents’ farm near Dexter.

      “Back in 1890 when Leora Goff was born in Guthrie County, Iowa, the new states of Idaho and Wyoming had just been added to the Union, making 44 stars in the flag. Utah became a State when she was 5, the same year her father went bankrupt in Nebraska’s drought, adding the 45th star.

      “Leora was nearly 17, living in rural Audubon County, riding a horse into Audubon to take piano lessons, and helping her dad with his popcorn crop, when Oklahoma was admitted to the Union–46 stars.

      “The 48-star flag came about when New Mexico and Arizona became states right before the Titanic sank in 1912. Leora was 21 then, living at Wichita, Iowa, not yet married.

      “It was that familiar 48-star flag for the next 33 years–through Leora’s marriage to Clabe Wilson, the Great War, the births of their 10 children, the loss of three as infants, and through WW II, when they lost three sons.

      “Flag Day was so important to Leora Wilson. She’d display the American flag outside her little house in Guthrie Center, where she lived out her last decades. . . . “

Grandma Leora Goff Wilson. Taken at Mom’s house on the farm south of Dexter. The little souvenir Capri bell sent home with her son Danny’s effects from Italy is attached to her watchband.

Montie Montgomery produced it for Our American Stories. Here it is.  It runs 12 minutes.

The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland is available in paperback, hardbound, ebook, and audiobook through Amazon.com and Amazon.uk.

31 comments

    • Thank you, Rainer. Grandma Leora lost three of her five sons who served in WWII. One of them wrote a message in his military New Testament under a picture of the flag, “I give everything for the country it stands for.” lump in throat

      Reply

  4. I enjoyed reading the story in your book, and I enjoyed reading it all over again today as we remember Flag Day tomorrow. Thank you, Joy.

    Reply

  5. Smiles and goosebumps…Joy. Echoing the earlier comments. So perfect…so good to see this pop up today. I love it here and in your book. Never forget. Sending big hugs. 💝💝💝

    Reply

  12. I don’t know how you do it. You are so prolific, so kind, such a good writer and storyteller. And best of all, you write about those relationships that matter. You are me hero.

    Reply

    • Dave, because of last year’s misery with Crohn’s, I couldn’t write, so I gathering up my newspaper stories from the 1990s! That’s how the potluck of The Immigrant and the Outlaw came to be. I discovered that so many of them had also become Our American Stories stories, so I asked Lee Habeeb to write the Foreword. I think he had fun doing it! They have a new website, which discombobulated the links to your stories. Did you record “My Three Fathers” for them? I can’t find it. Would you think about it? (I found the one about your mother.) Congratulations on that new daughter-in-law! (Biologic infusion day tomorrow for Crohn’s–keeps things quiet for another 8 weeks. Thank God for modern medicine!) Dave, I’m blessed by your note.

      Reply

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