For Joy Neal Kidney, the American flag is more than a symbol. It’s a reminder of family members who served, sacrificed, and never came home. During World War II, Joy’s grandparents sent five sons into the military. Three would never return.
Years after the war ended, the family received a box containing the personal belongings of one of those sons, Army Air Forces airman Danny Wilson. Inside was a small New Testament. Tucked among its pages was a hand-drawn American flag and a note written in Danny’s own hand: “I give everything for the country it stands for.” Joy shares the moving story of her family’s wartime sacrifice and why the American flag has always meant something deeply personal to them.
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Lee Habeeb (00:10):
This is Lee Habeeb, and this is Our American Stories.
We tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports, and from business to history—and everything in between, including your stories.
Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. They’re some of our favorites.
This next story comes from a listener. Today, Joy Neal Kidney, a regular contributor and listener on WHO in Des Moines, tells her story of why the flag means so much to her and her family.
Here’s Monty Montgomery with the story.
Monty Montgomery (00:50):
It’s easy for us to forget the meaning of things constantly around us.
If you drive through Washington, D.C. over a summer, seeing the Pentagon, Jefferson Memorial, Capitol Building, and Washington Monument begins to just seem like a part of everyday life.
They’re just there, and the splendor adorning them simply vanishes in the midst of a busy rush-hour commute to Arlington, where our national heroes are buried.
Adorning their graves is another symbol of our great country that we can often forget the importance of to so many people: the American flag.
Joy Neal Kidney’s family is a group of some of those people who don’t forget its meaning, though.
Here’s Joy, author of The Ora’s Letters, with more on what the flag of our nation means to her and her family.
Joy Neal Kidney (01:46):
The American flag was precious to my grandmother, who often wore a small sparkly red, white, and blue flag-shaped pin.
In one of my favorite pictures ever, she’s standing below a flag and grinning.
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 forty-four stars in the flag.
She was five years old when Utah became a state, adding the forty-fifth star. That was the same year her father went bankrupt in Nebraska’s drought.
Leora was nearly seventeen when Oklahoma was admitted to the Union—forty-six stars.
They lived in rural Ottumwa County then, and she rode a horse to the county seat town to take piano lessons. She helped her dad with his popcorn crop and her mother with ten younger siblings.
The forty-eight-star flag came about when New Mexico and Arizona became states, right before the Titanic sank in 1912.
Leora was twenty-one then, living in Wichita, Iowa, not yet married.
It was that familiar forty-eight-star flag for the next thirty-three years: through Leora’s marriage to Clay Wilson, the Great War, the births of their ten children, the loss of three as infants, and through World War II, when they lost three sons.
Leora regularly displayed the flag outside her little house in Guthrie Center, where she lived out her last decades.
Her family had sacrificed so much for that emblem of the nation.
When Japan officially surrendered at the end of World War II, two sons were missing in action: Dale in New Guinea and Danny in Europe.
Their youngest son was killed in training at the end of the war.
A folded American flag was presented to Clay and Leora by Junior’s Army Air Forces friend and fellow pilot, Ralph Woods, at the funeral.
The war was over.
The Wilsons’ two surviving sons had served in the Navy.
Delbert and his family moved home to be with his folks.
Dale Wilson has never been found.
They eventually learned that son Danny’s grave had been located in Austria and that he had been killed in action the day he was listed as missing.
Months later, a carton of Danny Wilson’s possessions from his base in Italy arrived at the Wilson acreage south of Perry, sent from the Army Effects Bureau of the Kansas City Quartermaster Depot.
Clay signed for the carton.
I suppose they opened it.
But did they sort through their son’s eighteen pairs of socks, five cotton undershirts, three khaki trousers, and other clothing?
If they had, they would have found Danny’s wristwatch, souvenirs from his R&R in Rome over Christmas 1944, a fountain pen, and other items—including a small New Testament.
The war was over, but life just plodded on and on, with daily chores to keep them busy.
According to Leora’s diary, she churned butter every week. Two cows had calves. Clay helped a neighbor with field work.
At some point, maybe they thumbed through Danny’s small New Testament.
They would have found the page with the American flag on it.
Under that flag is an arrow drawn in ink and these words, in his usual orderly handwriting, with his signature:
“I give everything for the country it stands for.”
If this brings tears to my eyes these many decades later, how did my grandparents deal with it?
It’s no wonder the American flag was so precious to my grandmother.
Lee Habeeb (06:42):
And a special thanks to Joy Neal Kidney for sharing her story, her mother’s story, her grandmother’s story, the family story—and in the end, the American story.
Because that’s what the American flag represents: all of our stories.
My own family had the same story.
I have the flag now that my mom got from her mom.
My mother’s only brother was killed in World War II.
John LaPadula, a paratrooper, landed behind enemy lines and was never heard from again.
No effects. Just a flag.
And a special thanks also to WHO for carrying our show and for allowing these stories to happen.
Again, if you have a story about anything, send it our way.
We love hearing from listeners.
Joy Neal Kidney’s story, her family’s story, the American flag’s story, here on Our American Stories.
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