Major Brent Taylor Foundation flag, ‘The Lieutenant,’ stolen
TIM VANDENACK, Standard-Examiner
Representatives from Weber Remembers: The 9/11 Project carry a giant U.S. flag, "The Lieutenant," at the Farr West Freedom Festival parade on Monday, July 5, 2021.NORTH OGDEN — One of the giant Major Brent Taylor Foundation flags that has become a regular at parades and other public events around Weber County has been stolen.
Jennie Taylor, the widow of Brent Taylor, the foundation namesake, had feared the apparent theft may have been some sort of statement against the organization or its cause of promoting public service and the efforts of the nation’s service men and women. Now she suspects the spur may have been more mundane.
“We’re guessing it may be a random act of thievery,” she said Monday.
Still, the apparent theft of the 30-foot by-60-foot flag dubbed “The Lieutenant” is disheartening. The larger Major Brent Taylor Foundation flag — “The Major,” which measures 78 feet by 150 feet and is hung at the mouth of Coldwater Canyon in North Ogden around Veteran’s Day each November — is still safe and sound.
North Ogden police are investigating the theft, Taylor said, and if the culprit can’t be caught, she hopes whoever took it abandons the flag in a public place so it can be found and reused. The flag, worth perhaps $1,500, was being held in a locked transport trailer parked on a North Ogden city street and it disappeared between last Friday night and last Saturday morning.
“Saturday morning we awoke to find the lock on the trailer had been removed, the door was wide open and the large case and flag were gone. Fortunately, nothing else was taken or damaged,” reads a Facebook post from the Major Brent Taylor Foundation.
Jennie Taylor doesn’t know how anyone could profit monetarily from The Lieutenant.
“It’s probably of no value to anyone but us,” she said. Her husband, Brent Taylor, who was the North Ogden mayor, was killed in late 2018 while on a year-long deployment to Afghanistan with the Utah Army National Guard.
The big flag and many more smaller flags were being held in the trailer for transport Saturday morning to the funeral of Trenton Franson, a member of the U.S. Marine Corps who died Aug. 1 after an off-duty accident. The smaller 3-foot-by-5-foot flags in the trailer were not taken.
“The services were beautiful, and volunteers were able to set up 250 flags,” reads the Major Brent Taylor Foundation Facebook post.