The man behind Bluff City's Avenue of Flags
Every day at about 1 p.m., Marvin Schmidt gets into his red truck and drives to Bluff City Cemetery. He visits the graves of his wife and his grandson and makes a circuit through the property.
He says he is being nosy, checking up on the cemetery maintenance, looking for things to criticize.
At 93, old habits die hard. Schmidt, of Elgin, worked at Bluff City Cemetery from about 1960 to 1985, serving as the superintendent for most of that time. And his legacy is plain to see.
During his tenure, Schmidt said he ordered groundskeepers to trim every stone in the cemetery, instead of just the ones families paid extra to keep up. New sections were added and filled. But perhaps the greatest innovation of his career was launching the Avenue of Flags.
In a letter Schmidt drafted to all the families of veterans buried in Bluff City Cemetery, he said Memorial Day was losing its significance. Parades and ceremonies at the local cemetery were left behind as new cars gave people the motivation to go on trips and celebrate the start of summer.
"Today we have a generation grown up which does not remember the historical nature of Memorial Day," Schmidt wrote.
He discovered the Avenue of Flags idea in a book about how to improve cemeteries on Memorial day. Schmidt figured the original suggestion was for small flags, but he had something else in mind.
Schmidt and his secretary sent letters to about 700 military families asking for the flags given to them upon the death of their loved ones, intending to line the cemetery with them in honor of their service.
"Perhaps this tribute would give the upcoming generation a feeling between the cemetery and the past history, and bring back some of the significant meaning of Memorial Day," Schmidt wrote to the families, asking for the flags and $7 for the poles and nameplates.
A woman in her 90s wrote back from Chicago just a few days later. Schmidt still has the letter written in her carefully formed cursive on now yellowed paper. The woman's father was a veteran of the Civil War and she hadn't received a flag when he died.
Schmidt got one for her and anyone else who needed one over the years he oversaw the program - and at no charge. About 200 people participated for the first display in 1968 and that number topped 400 before Schmidt retired in 1985. Now more than 500 flags are displayed along the Avenue each year.
Schmidt's father served in World War I. His brother, three brothers-in-law and one son all joined the Army. He himself was a farmer before he started working in the cemetery but he had great respect for military service personnel. And he didn't like the way they were remembered at Bluff City.
"There were three years they didn't put out any flags at all," Schmidt said. "They usually put out those little flags on the graves, then they said they couldn't afford it. That's when I got interested in doing something else."
The cost has risen significantly from the $7 one-time contribution in Schmidt's day. Now it costs $150 for the nameplate and pole and $75 if families want to purchase a flag.
Schmidt thinks the ceremony has become cost-prohibitive but maintains that it turned around the reputation of the cemetery in the community.
"I think that brought the respect back to Bluff City. I still say it did," Schmidt said.
A Memorial Day ceremony will begin at 11 a.m. May 28 at the cemetery, 945 Bluff City Blvd., where the Avenue of Flags will provide a backdrop for the Elgin Patriotic Memorial Association's program.