The Baboquivari Unified School District will receive 181 U.S. flags for its schools and district offices on Friday.
Superintendent Edna Morris will accept the flags from the nonprofit organization Flags for the Flagless, which donates Old Glory to schools, businesses, churches, homeowners and senior centers.
Officer Charles Foley, of the Tucson Police Department, is a co-founder of the flag organization and will meet with Morris in Sells to deliver the flags.
“I am happy and grateful for the people that made this happen,” said Foley, explaining that he met with Morris in December after she approached him to discuss the organization and its work in Tucson and across the nation in providing flags to schools that are in need of Old Glory.
“This is the single, largest donation that Flags for the Flagless has done,” said Foley, adding that he is humbled to provide the flags for the children, along with their families, and the district employees.
The flags will be put up in classrooms at the district’s Indian Oasis primary, elementary and intermediate campuses; Baboquivari High School and middle school campus; and the alternative high school.
All the schools, except Baboquivari High and middle schools, are located in Sells, which is the capital of the Tohono O’odham Nation and is 60 miles southwest of Tucson. The nation is about the size of Connecticut.
Baboquivari High and the middle school campus is in Topawa, which is about 15 minutes south of Sells.
Foley initially formed Flags for the Flagless in 2014 to raise Old Glory on barren flagpoles in Tucson. The flag, said Foley, “represents freedom, responsibility and hope.”
Paul Volpe, of Nova Home Loans, and his wife, Briana Volpe, who is a teacher, donated more than $2,000 for the purchase of the flags for the Baboquivari district. “We come from a military family and we realize the flag represents everybody in this country. There is a lot of meaning behind what it stands for — whether you are a new immigrant or from a long line of generations of Americans,” said Volpe.
Volpe said his late father, James Thomas Volpe, was an Air Force veteran.
“My father passed away when I was 19, and his interment flag sits above my mantle at my house,” said Volpe.
He said he is proud when it has flown at the University of Arizona football stadium for the past two Arizona Bowl games because of Flags for the Flagless.
Foley has raised veterans’ interment flags at UA football games . Veterans’ interment flags have also flown over Tucson on 13 flagpoles for the Fourth of July.
The Tucson community has supported Flags for the Flagless with about $10,000 in donations since it was founded.
