Ace Hardware wants to honor fallen American veterans this Memorial Day weekend with a patriotic giveaway.
The hardware retailer is partnering with the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization to give away one million American flags on Saturday, ahead of the Memorial Day federal holiday on May 26.
Ace Hardware said customers will get one free 8-by-12-inch American flag at participating stores while supplies last. For each free flag distributed, another flag will be donated to the VFW for placement on veterans’ graves.
“Ace is proud to support this important initiative and offer American flags to both our customers and the VFW in remembrance of those who gave their lives in service,” Ace Hardware’s chief marketing officer Kim Lefko said. “With our stores nationwide, this is a special opportunity for Ace, our customers, and our team members to come together and honor the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice.”
The first Memorial Day, organized by Black residents of Charleston, South Carolina, was nearly erased from history. In 1865, a group of Black Charlestonians exhumed a mass, unmarked grave filled with the bodies of Union soldiers, and then gave them proper burials. LX News storyteller Jalyn Henderson speaks with David Blight, a historian who uncovered the Memorial Day history — and Black history — that was nearly lost.
“We are grateful to work alongside Ace to remember and honor those who have fallen in service to our nation,” VFW national commander Al Lipphardt, a Vietnam War veteran, said.
Lipphardt said the event helps honor soldiers who died in conflicts, like Lewis Sloan of East Point, Georgia; Kenneth Adams of Santa Clara, California; Philip Adams of Croton Falls, New York; Robert Waddell of Batavia, Ohio; and Rodney Loatman of Newark, New Jersey — who all died in the Vietnam War.
“These men served under my command when they paid the ultimate price for freedom, and this initiative ensures their service, and all who gave their full measure of devotion, will never be forgotten,” Lipphardt added.
According to the U.S. National Archives, more than 58,200 U.S. service members died in the Vietnam War, a long conflict between communist North Vietnam, supported by the Soviet Union and China, and non-communist South Vietnam, supported by the U.S. and allies.
The U.S. was involved in more of an advisory role soon after the war began in the 1950s. U.S. combat troops were sent to the Southeast Asian country in 1965 and remained engaged until the U.S. withdrawal in 1973. The war officially ended when North Vietnam captured the South Vietnamese capital in the “Fall of Saigon” in 1975. The communist government renamed Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City after the war ended.
It’s estimated that between one million and three million people —many of them Vietnamese civilians — died in the Vietnam War.
U.S. death toll in all conflicts, according to the Congressional Research Service:
- American Revolutionary War — 4,435
- War of 1812 — 2,260
- Mexican-American War — 13,283
- American Civil War (Union and Confederate deaths per 2024 estimate) — 698,000
- Spanish-American War — 2,446
- World War I — 116,516
- World War II — 405,399
- Korean War — 36,574
- Vietnam War — 58,220
- Persian Gulf War — 383
- Operation Enduring Freedom (War in Afghanistan/Global War on Terrorism) — 2,349
- Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq War) — 4,418
- Operation New Dawn (U.S. support for Iraq) — 74
- Operation Inherent Resolve (U.S. war against Islamic State) — 96
