IMPERIAL, Mo. — As Americans take the opportunity to honor veterans this Memorial Day, a Missouri man is trying to find the owner of a missing boxed flag.
Gary Bourisaw, from Jefferson County, said he was driving back from his wife’s eye doctor appointment near Imperial, Missouri, on Wednesday when he spotted something in the road, KMOV reported.
“There was a box in the road and laying right next to the box was this flag right,” Bourisaw told the television station. “I busted a U-ey and went back and got the flag. There was even people stopping helping me with flashers.”
Bourisaw said he was a Vietnam War veteran who spent 15 months overseas in 1969-1970. He said an American flag still has a special meaning for him, and he was not going to let a flag contained in a veterans display case remain on the ground. Or any flag, for that matter.
“I couldn’t leave it laying there,” Bourisaw told KMOV. “That’s just not going to happen.”
Bourisaw believes the flag belongs to the family of a deceased veteran and he wants to return it to them.
“My father was a vet, he was in World War II. I have his flag,” Bourisaw told the television station. “If that was my dad’s flag, I would want it back.”
There was no name in the display case, so Bourisaw posted photos of the flag on Facebook.
“I will gladly bring your flag to a neutral place, filling station, grocery store, etc for you to have it back,” Bourisaw wrote.
“We’re still a great country, greatest in the world,” Bourisaw told KMOV. “Like the Iwo Jima thing with the Marines trying to stand that flag up on a place where they’ve lost a thousand lives, you know. The flag means something.”