Uta Kuhn started the Sun City Center Patriots Club almost single-handedly in 2003, but the service organization has had to disband after losing so many volunteers, mostly to age and health concerns. One of the main duties of the former club has been picked up by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution: the hanging and maintaining of U.S. flags. Penny Fletcher photo.
Uta Kuhn has worn her red-white-and-blue jacket and hat proudly since 2003.
When the Sun City Center Chamber of Commerce could no longer maintain the responsibility of hanging flags up and down S.R. 674 for patriotic holidays, Kuhn came up with the idea of forming a club under the umbrella of the Sun City Center Community Association.
With so many veterans living in the area, her idea quickly caught on, and the club was founded.
Now the same problem the Chamber had has come upon the Patriots Club — too few aging and feeble elderly volunteers — so the George Mercer Brooke Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution have taken on some of Patriots Club’s duties.
The Patriots Club and the DAR go about things in different ways, so let’s first see what the Patriots Club has accomplished.
Since 2003, Kuhn has often been seen wearing her specially made red-white-and-blue outfit not only on patriotic holidays but at all kinds of local functions, to call attention to the club and to the veterans who have sacrificed for their country.
Soon after the club was formed, bylaws were written and a board was voted in. The duty of seeing that flags were hung for patriotic holidays expanded in scope to include noting the condition of all flags in the community; handing out small (stick) flags for residents to place on their front lawns; paying a landscape company to hang and service the flags; and attending many community events to promote patriotism.
“I really enjoyed it,” Kuhn said in a recent interview. “But in recent years, it has become impossible to get and keep volunteers to attend the events. Putting tables up and down, setting up and manning them just can’t be done with the few who are left.”
South Bay Hospital, Sun Towers, the CA and community clubs and organizations — especially veterans organizations — all offered support, which helped the club to pay ValleyCrest Landscape company to do the climbing necessary to put the flags up and take them down.
“Money wasn’t the issue. ValleyCrest gave us a really, really good rate and donors gave us funds,” Kuhn said.
But the number of volunteers needed to man tables and attend events was dwindling every year. Kuhn thinks it is because theirs was a service organization, not a social club.
Many of the service organizations have lost membership in the past 10 years as the people who formed them got too elderly (and/or ill) to continue their hard work and, they say, newer residents are younger, many still work, and they don’t volunteer like the last generation of retirees did.
Sun City Center is a 55-and-up community, but you do not have to be retired to live there and many people 55 and older now work, either by choice or because inflation has made it impossible for them to retire.
“We weren’t a social club,” Kuhn said. “Most of the people joining things now want social events. We tried to hold one, and it bombed. That just wasn’t our purpose.”
Besides seeing that flags were hung on the Fourth of July, Memorial Day and Veterans Day (and often left up for a week or 10 days before or after the actual event), the club collected money and items for veterans in area VA hospitals, and members visited with them.
“It wasn’t all about flags,” Kuhn said. “The idea was to honor our vets in every way we could.”
Gradually, though, fewer and fewer of the volunteers were able to keep things going, and Kuhn said her own health also became a problem when it came to attending and maintaining a presence at community events.
Recently, Kuhn said, she had to give it up.
That’s when the local chapter of the DAR stepped up.
George Mercer Brooke Chapter Chair and Recording Secretary Jan Bassett explained that taking over the duties of overseeing hanging flags around town was a natural for them.
The local chapter, led by President Mary McIntyre, was founded in 1976 and is part of the national DAR organization, founded in 1890, Bassett said.
“We’re going to be taking over the flag duties down S.R. 674 and also the two American flags and two MIA flags flanking the civic signs at the entrance to the community (near the I-75 exits),” Bassett said in a telephone interview Feb. 15. “We weren’t aware the Patriots Club was doing those four flags and only found that out today.”
Handing out small flags at citizen naturalization events in Tampa at the Federal Courthouse is already a job undertaken by the DAR.
“We love seeing the people become citizens of the United States, and give them each a flag,” she added.
Besides this, the local DAR supports the veterans at James A. Haley Veterans Hospital and the Fisher House, where families of veterans being treated and rehabilitated stay; provides support to Southeastern Guide Dogs for blinded and other veterans needing seeing-eye dogs; and also supports the Athena House for homeless women veterans.
The DAR is a legacy organization for women descended from those who served in the American Revolution when the first U.S. Colonies were founded.
