David Bush and Dick Clements: Photo by Kim Leeson
Every Fourth of July, hundreds of small flags start showing up around our neighborhood. They don’t pop up out of thin air, so who’s behind this long-standing patriotic tradition? Dick Clements has been in real estate in Dallas since 1955, and in 1988 he and his wife, Chloie Clements, assembled a team of Dick’s employees to help plant flags in neighbors’ yards. In 2009, he passed the baton to his former employee, David Bush, who continues the tradition to this day.
How’d the tradition start?
Dick Clements: We had a marketing girl, and she came to us and said she thought it would be a good idea. The only thing I really remember is that we started with just a few hundred.
David Bush: Y’all probably just did it along the [Lakewood] parade route.
Dick Clements: Yeah, we may have. It was accepted so overwhelmingly, just in the few streets that we did, that we expanded. We kept expanding it every year, and the last year that we had it before we gave it to David, we had 8,000.
Were you surprised by the reaction?
Dick Clements: Oh, yes.
Chloie Clements: Remember that bulletin board in the office? We just got lots of thank you notes and phone calls.
What was it like at the beginning?
David Bush: We would meet up at Dick’s office at like 5 in the morning — phew — to start passing them out. We’d have one driving, and then one jumping out to pass them out. We’d reconvene at the office and usually have a picnic-style breakfast. After that, you’d have people jumping up to run hot-shot deliveries because people would call to say, ‘I didn’t get my flag.’ I’ve sold houses before where you’ll see them all rolled up in people’s garages because on the 4th of July they’ll grab those and put them out in the yard. We did it together from like 2000, and we collaborated until 2009.
And, David, you took over from there?
Dick Clements: David asked if he could take it over, and I said, ‘Sure, take it.’
David Bush: It’s kind of one of those things like, ‘Golly, I don’t know if I want to pay for all this,’ but it’s one of those things that people expect. People enjoy it and it kind of adds to the whole small-town, slice-of-Americana feel that Lakewood has. It just seemed like something that you couldn’t not do anymore. It’s part of our Fourth of July.
How has it changed over the years?
Chloie Clements: It really took a lot of planning as far as making the assignments to the agents, but now David hires a man to put them out.
David Bush: Yeah, apparently Dick is a better salesman than me, because he talked his agents into being foot soldiers to put these out when it’s 100 degrees outside. I couldn’t convince my agents to do it. They said, ‘Why don’t we just pay someone?’
Has that made it easier?
Chloie Clements: Well, it’s more expensive. It’s not as fun because you don’t have the camaraderie. But you know, we were younger and it was just fun.
David Bush: Yeah, that was just a part of it — the camaraderie. It was something you kind of cussed in the morning, but then once you’re done, you just have that great feeling. We would knock it out in a few hours, in about a three-hour window. Now with one individual walking around, it takes about four days for him to get them out.
How much does it cost to do this every year?
David Bush: It costs about $2,500 for the cards, the flags and the labor. We put out about 3,500 flags.
So people can expect to starting seeing them around the neighborhood starting July 1?
David Bush: Yep, around that time.
What areas do you cover?
David Bush: It’s everything east of Abrams, north of Gaston, south of Mockingbird. And the Cloisters, and the area around Hillgreen.
*This interview was edited for clarity.
