POOLER, Ga. () – A local 84-year-old veteran is honoring America’s heroes with a display, one flag at a time.

As you drive down U.S 80 in Pooler, across from city hall, you may have seen these flags. 

“This year, I decided I wanted to do a different situation because it’s the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II,” Clyde Watson said. “It’s also the 83rd anniversary of the Mighty Eighth [Air Force Museum].”

It is a project he started in 2008 at the First Baptist Church of Pooler to honor veterans and service members who died for our country. He has more than a dozen state flags and all military flags, a salute to each passerby.

“…everybody loves it,” Watson said. “Everybody likes it.  And I had one man to call Saturday morning. He said ‘Clyde, you done a wonderful job up there.’”

He said he contacts the states directly to requests flags or buys them himself when he can.

“I’ve had a couple of get a couple of people give me some money to buy some flags, and the flags are expensive now,” Watson said. “They’re more expensive than they were when we first started and we have about a poll to put them on.  So, we’ve had some few donations”

It is a meaningful tradition that he hopes will remind people of the sacrifice behind our freedom.

“It is a personal to me that we’re able to celebrate a free United States because of what those veterans did,” he said.

He said, “…it’s the same thing that Jack Kennedy said, don’t ask what you can what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country.”

Watson told his work doesn’t end here.

“We hope to get next year,” he said. “I hope to finally get all of the state flags and maybe even get a soldier’s name, so we can put it on the flag board. that’s my goal.”

Watson says they are always looking for monetary donations to keep this tradition alive, and he is hoping to expand the display by adding more flags to the lineup.

He told that he wants to collect all of the state flags to donate to the Mighty Eighth.