Middletown VFW Successfully Hangs American Flags Over Parkway

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — The American flags are back over the Garden State Parkway in Middletown, and they shall remain there permanently.

Anyone driving down the Parkway north and south at Exit 109 (the Middletown/Red Bank exit) will now see two American flags hanging from the Red Hill Road overpass.

The flags were hung by Rich Furlong, a Vietnam War veteran who served with the U.S. Army, and is a member of Middletown VFW Post 2179.

He just put them up Wednesday of this week.

However, it has been a year-long battle with state bureaucracy to get the flags hung, and he even had to get a Star-Ledger reporter to go to bat for him, he explained.

"About a year ago this time we tried to hang the flags at the Red Hill Rd. overpass. Well, we put them up and then they were mysteriously taken down just a few weeks later," said Furlong. He said he filed a police report with Middletown Police but to this day, he still does not know who removed the flags, although he suspects it was the NJ Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Parkway and the Turnpike.

Last September, this same issue broke out in Woodbridge, where the Turnpike Authority took down about 60 flags that had been hanging for years from a Turnpike overpass. The local Woodbridge/Carteret VFW started hanging the flags after Sept. 11, 2001 and the collection had grown to be about 60 flags in total. However, in that instance the VFW also put up the yellow "Don't Tread On Me" flag and the "Thin Blue Line" flag that shows support for police officers.

Even though the VFW took down the "Don't Tread on Me" and Thin Blue Line flag, the Turnpike Authority still took down all the flags, including the American ones.

Last September, Gov. Phil Murphy intervened in that controversy and said the American flag would be allowed to be hung from Turnpike/Parkway overpasses — but no other flag.

Furlong said with the help of Star Ledger transportation reporter Larry Higgs, he and other Middletown vets learned they had to apply for a permit from the Turnpike Authority to fly the America flags.

The flags are up now on Red Hill Road and will be there permanently.

"We were allowed to fly an American flag but not the black POW, Prisoners of War flag," he said. "Don't ask me why, I don't know. We will keep fighting for that."

Don't miss one second of local Middletown news! Click here to get Patch email updates.

Have a news tip? Email carly.baldwin@patch.com