Thursday, May 28, 2009

Rock On! American Flag Goes Back Up

From The Dallas Morning News In Mansfield, Texas ~ Kindred Hospital and its corporate bosses in Kentucky got a lesson in patriotism Wednesday.

After a thorough roasting in the blogosphere, Kindred officials decided to let hospital supervisor Debbie McLucas put an American flag back on her office wall.

"We have invited the employee (McLucas) to put the flag back up," Kindred said in a brief press release.

McLucas did not return phone calls from The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday but she told her story on KRLD radio’s early-morning talk show. She said her husband spent 24 years in the U.S. Army. One son is an ex-Marine and a second son is an Army veteran. A daughter is a combat medic serving in Iraq.

So, as a patriotic American and with Memorial Day approaching, McLucas decided last week to mount a 3-foot-by-five-foot American flag on the wall of an office she shares with three other supervisors at Kindred Hospital.

McLucas said she got to work on Friday and found the flag had been taken down because another supervisor had complained that the display was offensive. The complaining employee is an African immigrant who has lived in the United States for 14 years, McLucas said.

"The other supervisor took it down unknown to me because I wasn’t at work that day, and it’s when I returned to work last Friday that I was told it was taken down because it was offensive," McLucas said during the interview on KRLD.

The Kindred Hospital press release said the company is working to resolve this "isolated incident between two employees."

Rhonda Williams, hospital administrator, said McLucas was not at work Wednesday but has accepted the offer to remount the flag on the office wall.

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