Flathead Valley Exchange Club and the Kalispell 2022 Field of Honor®

The Field of Honor® kicked off on Friday May 27th, with an opening ceremony that was held from 10:30 to 11:00am. The guest speaker was Marc Racicot, former governor of Montana. The event included opening and closing prayers, a color guard, National Anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance, an overview of the event, introduction of distinguished guests and sponsors and Racicot’s speech. The ceremony closed with a playing of Taps. While the day was a chilly and rainy weekday, more than 100 residents turned out to experience the event. The Exchange Club thanks all who attended!

The Kalispell Field of Honor® included a display of 1,024 American Flags. While many attendees were wondering what the significance of that number was, there wasn’t one. The Flathead Valley Exchange Club meant to put up 1,000 flags because that would be an impactful display. However, they got a bit carried away and before they knew it had 1,024 flags installed. Oops.

Community members dedicated flags to a hero of their choice, living or deceased. If they chose to keep the flag at the end of the ceremony, they stopped by to pick it up on Memorial Day. They also could choose to just dedicate the flag and let the flag fly at a future ceremony.

The field was fully lit and was open 24 hours per day. Taps was played each night at 10pm, and at noon on Memorial Day.

The Exchange Club also added some additional memorials, such as a circle of 13 flags to honor the soldiers recently killed in Afghanistan as seen in the following video was provided by Joe Javorsky of Kalispell Montana (@drone_177 production on Instagram) who stopped by on Saturday.

Net proceeds will be provided to four local veteran non-profit organizations: NW Veterans Stand Down & Food Pantry, Veterans Community Response, Vietnam Veterans of America NW Chapter 1087 and Montana Veterans Home Memorial Foundation.

The Field of Honor® and Healing Field® events are held nationwide, and are programs of the Colonial Flag Foundation. The Colonial Flag Foundation established the Healing Field® after September 11th, 2001 as a way to commemorate those we lost. Hundreds of communities across America have since hosted a Healing Field® or Field of Honor® to raise money and awareness for various charitable causes.

The Flathead Valley Exchange Club is the local chapter (established in 2020) of the National Exchange Club, established in 1911. There are 630 chapters nationwide, all with the mission to focus on helping community non-profits in the areas of Americanism, Community Service and Youth Programs. The club also has a national project to prevent child abuse. The Flathead Valley Exchange Club provides both volunteer hours and fundraising to help the community become a better place to live.

If you are interested in seeing more information on the event, check out the official Kalispell Field of Honor® site.

As a final note, we were asked by many attendees whether we would be holding this event again in the future. We hope to be able to do so, but we’ll definitely need more people helping next time! If you have any interest in joining the Flathead Valley Exchange Club, join us on Facebook. We have weekly events and we would love to see you!

Thank you for reading about the Kalispell 2022 Field of Honor®.