Focus on Stars and Stripes has been unflagging

Since 1969, group has sold red, white and blue faithfully

Flag-sellers set up a roadside stand in East Memphis on Saturday after a week that happened to mark the biggest retreat of Confederate symbols since Gen. Grant was on the attack.

By quitting time at 2 p.m., Memphians for America sold about 80 U.S., Tennessee and military service flags, but never offered Confederate battle flags.

Some big retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Sears and Amazon last week pulled Confederate merchandise following the racially motivated massacre of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.

But Memphians for America had no Confederate battle flags to withdraw.

The group promotes patriotism, not a political view, said Sam Goff, one of Saturday’s volunteers.

“We did have several people ask about that,” the mortgage banker said, referring to a few people who stopped in the parking lot at Poplar Avenue and Colonial Road trying to buy a Confederate battle flag.

That is the spot where Memphians for America has sold flags one day a year — the Saturday before the Fourth of July — since 1969.

There are a few variations on the story explaining why former Memphis mayor Henry Loeb and some of his friends founded the organization.

Loeb was concerned about the disrespect that Vietnam War veterans were experiencing upon their return home from the battlefield, Goff said.

Members also have told the story of Loeb and friends being spurred to promote patriotism after the U.S. flag was twice stolen from the lawn of Loeb’s East Memphis neighbor.

Architect Robert T. ‘‘Buddy’’ Martin had posted those flags after learning his son was killed in Vietnam.

Memphians for America still counts more than 20 members, most military veterans, who meet each first Friday for breakfast at the Shoney’s restaurant on Summer Avenue at Sycamore View.

Loeb died in September 1992 at age 71.

In 1968, his staunch opposition to the unionization of sanitation workers drew Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis and an assassin’s gunshots.

But during a week when the nation became more sensitive to the power that symbols play in race relations, Loeb’s Memphians for American remained an unflagging promoter of patriotism.

The last customer on Saturday drove up as Goff and his crew were breaking down the stand.

“Just lately, more than ever, I’ve been so proud to be an American and I think that I want to show my flag,” Phyllis Gardner, a General Sessions Court judge, said as she wrote a check for the American flag.