The Sons of Confederate Veterans last week began the first work in five years at the confederate flag memorial on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Orange.
Marshall Davis, a statewide spokesman for the group who does not live in Orange County, said the group had gotten more money to spend on the memorial.
A group of volunteers, including some from Louisiana, were out at the memorial Saturday working on the memorial and mowing the grass. A ‘No Trespassing’ sign is posted on the property. The group had a small backhoe with a confederate flag attached. The riding mower also had a flag and the driver was wearing a red straw cowboy hat with the confederate flag symbol.
Orange Planning Director Kelvin Knauf said the group got a new building permit for the memorial last week after workers were seen putting up forms for the sidewalk.
The group first obtained a building permit in January 2013 and erected a concrete rotunda with 13 Grecian columns to represent the 13 states of the Confederate States of American during the Civil War.
The original plans put the value at $50,000 for the flag memorial to include the rotunda, a sidewalk of memorial bricks and flag poles to display different flags of the confederacy. Benches were also supposed to be installed in the park. When the project was announced in 2013, Granvel Block, who was commander of the Orange camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said he hoped the memorial would become a tourist attraction.
The local group installed the first flag on September 11, 2016, on the U.S. Patriots Day. The flag was the one representing the Army of Trans Mississippi, which had a black background with a red ‘X’ with white stars. The rebel battle flag is red with a blue ‘X’ and white stars.
The flag went missing and later the flagpole was missing. Recently, a Texas flag attached to a PVC pipe pole has been displayed at the site.
In 2013, the Orange City Council passed an ordinance restricting the size of flags and the height of flag poles. Car dealerships that were displaying large United States flags were given a ‘grandfather’ exemption for the sizes.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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