Pledging Allegiance

Kimberley McGee

Thursday, Sept. 27, 2001 | 9:23 a.m.

After the devastating terrorist attacks on America on Sept. 11, Americans have displayed their patriotism and hung the broad stripes and white stars of the U.S. flag from porches, cars and lapels.

Some Las Vegans have taken it further.

For some the flag is more than just a symbol; It's a response to terrorism and a way to honor victims.

Displaying it was all they could do.

"If I didn't fly the flag, I would have had to do something," Thomas Horito, a Las Vegas general contractor, said. "It was just very sad."

Horito hung a three-story-tall flag on the side of his detached garage behind his home near North Buffalo Drive and West Charleston Boulevard.

The large flag sat folded inside Horito's garage for nearly a year before Sept. 11.

The morning of the attack Horito and his crew of workers gathered at his home before driving to a construction site. But as the tragedy unfolded on TV, he knew work would be a useless endeavor. He told his employees to go home.

They wouldn't.

"We felt we had to do something, but all we could do was stare at the TV," Horito said.

Horito gathered his grieving crew and built a wood frame, which he attached to his garage. The frame lifted the three-story flag so that it could wave in the wind without touching the ground. The men then painted signs that read "God Bless America" and "For the victims and their families" and hung them over the flag.

Drivers on North Buffalo Drive honked at the men in appreciation of their patriotic efforts.

"It made us feel like we were doing something," Horito said.

By 9 a.m. the flag was waving and secure. The men returned to the TV in time to watch the first tower collapse.

"I knew they (the towers) were going to go, but I couldn't believe it," Horito said. He had often toured the towers during visits with his mother, who lives in New York.

"It was a rush to be way up there at the top," Horito said. "You could feel the buildings move and you were amazed how solid it was."

For Horito, the collapse of the buildings was doubly devastating. His mother's apartment is only a few blocks from where the Trade Center towers once stood.

Horito waited by the phone with his wife, Kellee, and six children for word that his mother was safe.

At 10 p.m. the call came. His mother had walked 15 miles over the Brooklyn Bridge from near the rubble of the towers to safety.

"I've always been patriotic," Horito said. "Now, maybe more so."

Although Horito's Japanese-American family was placed in California internment camps during World War II, he continues to fiercely support the United States, he said.

"What can I do but say I'm proud to be an American, and you can't do that to me," Horito said of the terrorist attacks. "So I'll fly the flag to show you this is what I stand for."

Following the attacks the flag took on many shapes.

At Courtesy Mitsubishi on West Sahara Avenue, a 1977 teal-green Volkswagen bus became a symbol of pride and a show of solidarity for a group of car salesmen.

The idea came to Peter Reele, used-car manager at Courtesy, a few days after the attack. The feelings of anger, helplessness and sadness continued to cling to him and his co-workers, he said.

"It felt so good to just do something to show how I, how we all felt," Reele said.

Reele and his co-workers spent five hours the following Saturday transforming the old, broken-down van into a vivid American flag.

It was a few hours of relief, Reele said. When the amateur artists were through, they wrote, "Wow!" in large white letters across the rear window .

"It's how we felt when we were finished with the painting," Reele said. "It was a little emotional."

They pushed the van to the street so that others could share in their expression of patriotism. The community has responded, Reele said, by honking and waving their own flags at the sales people on the car lot.

"It's been great," he said. "It really pulled us all together."

The van will be auctioned sometime next month and the proceeds will go to a charity to benefit the victims of the attacks.

Mason Martin used the blank canvas of his truck to reflect his sentiments.

He and his father spent three hours the weekend following the attacks adhering red-and-blue vinyl strips to his white GMC truck.

Martin had tried to purchase a flag -- on a bumper sticker, on a stick or a glossy piece of paper, perhaps. But stores all over town had run out.

"You just felt you had to do something, even if that was all you could do," Martin said.

Before the attacks Martin had displayed cartoon characters and humorous phrases on the rear window of his truck.

"I wouldn't have put a flag on my car before this," Martin said. "It just wasn't really a thought, I guess."

He will take the flag off his car eventually, he said, when the mood of the country is less overtly patriotic.

"People wave and honk, and they are flying their flags," Martin said. "You feel like you are part of something bigger than you, bigger than all of this (terrorism)."

For Chicagoan Frank Herold, the feeling is just as intense, except that he used a vehicle of a different nature -- himself -- to show it.

During a vacation in June to Las Vegas, the 46-year-old had an eagle and a flag tattooed on his upper left arm at Tattoo Heaven on Las Vegas Boulevard South.

"I've always been patriotic, and it was just time," Herold said.

Herold, who often visits Las Vegas, was proud as people commented about the tattoo.

In August he made an appointment for Sept. 24 to have the same type of tattoo placed on his right arm by the same artist during his next visit to Las Vegas. Following the attacks he had Sept. 11, 2001, somberly inscribed onto his flesh.

"A lot of people are flying flags now," Herold said. "I wanted this to be permanent."