‘Healing field’ foundation an enduring tribute post-9/11
One week before the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Paul Swenson happened to glance at a newspaper somebody was reading on his flight from Northern California to Salt Lake City. A number jumped out at him: 3,031. At the time, it was the estimated number of people believed to have died that awful day in 2001.
Swenson, owner of Colonial Flag, a flag supply company in Sandy, Utah, couldn’t get the number out of his mind. Somehow, he told himself, “I need to figure out a way to bring that number home.” That night, he came up with a plan, which he presented to Sandy city officials the next morning. He wanted to donate 3,031 American flags for a “healing field” on a grassy promenade in front of City Hall. Everyone agreed, and Swenson quickly lined up volunteers to help him set up the flags the night before the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
At 3 a.m., as he stood alone in the field, watching the flags fluttering in the moonlight, Swenson noticed a woman slowly walking up and down each row, hugging the flags.
“I knew then that the healing field would show more than the magnitude of 9/11,” he said. “It would become a personal experience for every person who visited.”
Sixteen years since that first flag display, his idea has taken off with hundreds of cities and organizations nationwide.
“You can see the power of the field when you watch people touch the flags,” said Swenson, now 62 and chairman of the Colonial Flag Foundation, a nonprofit that helps cities and community groups nationwide create “healing fields” of their own for Patriot Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and the Fourth of July.
“When people walk through a field and realize that each flag represents somebody’s husband, wife, child, uncle, aunt or neighbor, it shows the enormity more than a number on a page,” he said. “It has a huge emotional impact.”
On Tuesday, the 17th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center that killed 2,996 people, more than 60 communities hosted healing fields with help from Swenson’s foundation.
Colonial Flag sells flags to cities and organizations at cost — $15 each — to use year after year or auction off to the public to benefit local charities.
Swenson, who doesn’t take a salary as chairman of the foundation’s board, said Colonial Flag earns enough money to pay three employees to run the foundation and generally breaks even.
Swenson started his flag business a few years after college. The Vietnam War had just ended when Swenson graduated from Salt Lake County’s Skyline High School in 1974 and enrolled as a political-science major at the University of Utah. Five years later, he said, he decided to go into the flag business, selling American flags, international flags, sports flags and flagpoles with his brother, David, eventually buying the entire company with his wife, Elizabeth, in 1989.
Swenson said he always described himself as patriotic, but seeing more than 3,000 flags at that first healing field in his hometown “brought it all home.”
“You could see the emotion on everybody’s faces,” he said.
Within days, he said, other cities started calling, hoping to host similar events the following year.
“After four years, my wife and I were at a point when we wondered if we could keep doing it,” said Swenson, “because we had spent more than half a million of our money doing healing fields.”
That was when he switched from donating the flags to selling them at a low cost.
“I can’t imagine not doing this now,” he said. “I can think of no better way to honor those who died on that horrible day than with a healing field.”
Cities and towns across the country now commemorate the dark events of 9/11 with a field of flags.
“Seeing all those flags lined up in one space is a powerful thing,” said Sawn Swenson, 64, who is the foundation’s national director.