Navy veteran Rick Heilman told WSMV Channel 4 in Nashville that he was fired from his job because he followed the United States Flag Code and took a tattered flag. The employer denies that the flag was the reason .
Heilman, who spent 22 years in the Navy and was a chief diver, was at work at the Yearwood Equipment Company in Fayetteville, North Carolina when he noticed that the American flag that flies in front of the business had been worn down. He says he told his store manager that the flag needed to be taken down.
"I went in first thing, and I took the flag down," Heilman said. "And then I folded it up properly the way it should be."
"I said, 'Hey, the flag is pretty torn up out front. Do we have another one to replace it?' And he pretty much bluntly told me no. I said, 'OK, can we take it down until we get a new one?' And he again repeated, 'No,'" Heilman said.
Stewing over it all weekend, Heilman went back to work the following week and took it down in the morning. Mr. Heilman says his manager was angry over his actions, telling Heilman that he had bought a new flag to put up, but was mostly angry at what he deemed was insubordination. Heilman says he was told, "You've disrespected my authority and therefore you're fired."
Channel 4 News went to Yearwood to get the manager's side of the story. We asked the manager, PD Shelton, to do an on-camera interview but he declined, but did reiterate that Heilman was not fired for replacing the flag.
"He said, 'You're being fired for not following instructions, not because you took the flag down,'" Heilman said. "Well, the instructions he gave me were not viable. Too often, we, as society, have come to a point where we see something is wrong, we know that it's wrong and it's easier to just shake our head and walk away than it is to confront the problem."
Heilman said he took pictures of the tattered flag so people would believe his side of the story if it became a 'he said, he said' story, which is what it has become.
