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Frewsburg Scout Learns Flag-Folding Procedure Using Historic WWII Flag

Landon Stormer, left, a member of the Boys Scouts’ Allegheny Highlands Council Troop 133, performs the flag-folding ritual with U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Cory Reader as his grandfather, Mat Hagberg, an Army veteran of the Vietnam War, looks on. P-J photos by Gavin Paterniti

For one young Frewsburg resident, advancing to another level in his upward journey through the ranks of the Boy Scouts of America held a tinge of sentimentality.

Landon Stormer, 11, a member of the Boys Scouts’ Allegheny Highlands Council Troop 133, had an opportunity to learn proper flag-folding procedure from a member of the U.S. Army using the funeral flag of his great-grandfather, Carl Hagberg, a World War II Army veteran, who died in 2013.

On Thursday, Landon, who is a sixth-grader at Robert H. Jackson Elementary School, visited the U.S. Army recruitment center at Jamestown’s BWB Center with his father, Eric, and grandfather, Mat Hagberg, an Army veteran of the Vietnam War, for instruction in the proper method of folding an American flag given by Staff Sgt. Cory Reader. Eric Stormer said learning the flag-folding procedure was the final requirement in order for Landon, who is currently at the rank of Scout, to advance to Tenderfoot rank.

As part of his instruction, Landon, along with some other fresh Army recruits, took in some brief flag trivia administered by Reader, who then displayed a short video of a flag-folding ceremony as performed by members of the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard. Then Landon and reader performed the process themselves, first unfolding and then refolding the flag.

Landon said he plans to continue through to the rank of Eagle Scout, and was humbled by Thursday’s experience.

“It was an honor to come here,” he said. “It means a lot to me, getting to Tenderfoot and making my way up to Eagle Scout. And it was special that I got to use my great-grandpa’s flag.”

Carl Hagberg, born in 1919, as a 1936 graduate of Falconer High School and a 1947 graduate of Alfred University. During World War II, he served overseas as a lieutenant in the Persian Gulf Command in Iran. He continued his military service in the Army Reserve and retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel corps of engineers.

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