Our Mission

“The Flagman’s Mission Continues” purpose is to honor the service, lives, and sacrifices of the men and women that have worn the uniform. This includes remembering and honoring those that gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country. In addition, the mission purpose is to provide patriotic and educational information and pageantry for civic, military and community funerals, parades or patriotic events. We provide programs and education about flag etiquette, ceremonies, and proper rendition of honors for military active duty and veterans, police and firefighters, first responders, and other public officials. Our social Media informs the public about respecting our country and the institutions essential in providing our freedoms and our expressions of patriotism. Our mission operates regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation or sexual preference.

Our History

Larry Eckhardt shares his story:
Can’t remember the exact year he attended the soldier’s funeral — might have been 2006 — or the name of the fallen serviceman.
But he remembers feeling heartbroken that so little had been done publicly to commemorate the man’s sacrifice in his small western Illinois hometown of Aledo, which is Eckhardt’s hometown too.

A few days later, Eckhardt bought 50 flags, each about 3 by 5 feet. He started posting them in the small towns in this remote region of Illinois when funerals were held for local servicemen and women.

An Unlikely patriot, A chain smoker with long sideburns, a glistening stud in his left earlobe and his great-grandfather’s ring on a pinky finger, Eckhardt often wears a short-sleeved, collared American flag shirt. He calls the flag the most beautiful piece of cloth in the world but takes little credit for organizing droves of volunteers who have posted flags at nearly 200 funerals, visitations or similar memorials.

He favors small towns, places that don’t have resources, for his flag displays, he said. He pays for his efforts out of his own pocket.
But growing up in the area, Eckhardt said, he would have been the last person expected to travel around the country, hauling about 3,000 flags to the funerals and visitations of servicemen and women and a few emergency first-responders. He described himself as an “ornery” teenager who cared about two things: getting a fast car and girls.

After graduating from Aledo High School in 1974, Eckhardt followed his father and went to work at International Harvester in East Moline. He held factory-related jobs there until “I blew out my back big-time” in about 2004 and retired before he was 50. By then, Eckhardt had become a landlord, renting out homes and later apartments in Little York. Despite being “busy doing my own thing” as a young man, Eckhardt recalled that he found fulfillment by restoring the landscapes of overgrown cemeteries in the area. That respect for the dead may have resonated with him when he attended the young serviceman’s funeral in Aledo a dozen or so years ago.

“That was the one that made the biggest impact on me,” said Eckhardt, who often attended memorials for fallen military personnel from west-central Illinois. “It just bothered me that there weren’t more flags.” About two months after Eckhardt bought those first 50 flags and 200 smaller hand-held versions of the Stars and Stripes, a soldier from a nearby community died. Eckhardt recruited local volunteers to set flags along the route between the site of the funeral service and the cemetery. It was a heartening experience, Eckhardt recalled, and prompted him to continue. He originally limited his flag postings to a 100-mile radius of Little York, but he kept expanding, and acquiring more flags.

By the time he became ill, Eckhardt said, he was hauling about 3,000 flags and two larger versions — one 30 by 60 feet, another measuring 20 by 30 feet that he displays along a funeral procession or in a local gym or football stadium. “It gives the community a way to say ‘thank you,’ and it gives them a way to show the family that they care,” Eckhardt said. “You see the reaction that the family has, and it’s because they know members of their community had to work to put up the flags.”

Eckhardt, who’s become known as “Larry the Flagman,” has developed a method for his mission. After verifying when and where a visitation or funeral will occur, he contacts the local government and seeks permission for his flag display. Then he reaches out to the funeral home to ask family members if they’d like to have the flags posted.

If the family approves, Eckhardt contacts local media outlets, then “floods” Facebook and other social media looking for volunteers, who typically turn out by the dozens. They meet at a designated spot and set up flags on both sides of a procession’s route. After the ceremony or visitation, volunteers remove the banners and return them to Eckhardt, and he heads home, For years, Eckhardt has built up a stock of about 3000 American flags used to honor fallen military veterans and first responders. “I figure if nothing else, when I leave, these families will always remember the flags,” he said. “As long as they can remember those flags, they’ll remember their loved ones. We’re guaranteeing that they are never going to be forgotten.”
He is on his third truck since 2006 and estimates that he has logged 300,000 miles. Although he charges nothing for his patriotic displays, people occasionally donate to the effort.

In Henderson, Ky., on Easter, a father and his three children showed up in the lobby of the hotel where Eckhardt was staying, he recalled. The kids asked if they could use their Easter money to pay for his room.
In rural Missouri, a school bus full of high school kids stopped, filed out and spread flags for 6 miles, Eckhardt said. In Ottumwa, Iowa, an elderly woman with a walker hobbled across a parking lot and offered to help.
And, in Oakland, IL, a World War II vet haunted by the loss of so many friends thanked Eckhardt, shook his hand and forced a $20 bill into it. Sobbing Gold Star mothers have hugged him. A bejeweled woman on a bejeweled horse saluted him.

“He’s got a heart of gold; no doubt about it,” said Dale Nannen of Hopedale, IL, whose son, Marine Corps Maj. Reid Nannen, was killed in a training exercise in 2014 in Nevada. Eckhardt orchestrated the posting of 13 miles of flags on both sides of the route between the funeral home and the visitation at Reid’s high school, his father recalled.
“People around here for miles and miles couldn’t believe it,” Nannen said of the flags. Fellow Marines, many of them Naval Academy grads, told him they’d never seen anything like it, Nannen recalled. “It was very touching; very moving.”
At the Marine’s four-hour visitation in his high school gym, Eckhardt had a giant American flag mounted on the wall and made a point of deflecting any attention directed his way, Nannen said. In the years since, Eckhardt has provided flags for the entire route of an annual run honoring the fallen Marine, Nannen said.
“Larry’s very humble, humble, humble about all this,” Nannen said. “That can’t be stressed enough.”

Seeing good in people
His illness surfaced late last fall of 2019, when Eckhardt started choking on his food and experiencing trouble breathing. A visit to the doctor yielded the grave diagnosis. Larry lost the battle on March 30th 2020
I just wanted to share with everyone that Larry The Flagman did pick someone to carry out his mission !!

Our Future

Jeff Hastings will have the honor of continuing the mission Larry Eckhardt began and still continued to accomplish till his passing. His flags will still fly 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 it is within us all to continue supporting and standing behind our heroes and 1st responders. Their will never be another Larry but his mission will live on long after he has left us🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Jeff can be reached at Phone message 618-409-0323
Email : theflagmanmission@gmail.com
Also can be found on Facebook :Jeff Hastings
Address
118 west 6th street
O’Fallon, Illinois ,62269