Crest Memorial Students to Show Borough’s Colors

WILDWOOD CREST – After school Sept. 10, more than 50 student volunteers will take to the streets of the borough to plant flags at every street corner in Wildwood Crest.
The project, called Flags for Freedom, requires more than 1,000 flags and an army of volunteers to insert the flags at street corners.  For the third consecutive year, the project is coordinated through the Wildwood Crest Education Association, comprised of faculty and staff at Crest Memorial School.  Social studies teacher Lisa Travascio will gather middle school student volunteers to do the planting as part of her lessons centered around commemoration of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States that saw nearly 3,000 people perish.
Flags for Freedom originated in 2002.  Joyce Gould, a Wildwood Crest Commissioner, started the organization and solicited local businesses for donations to fund the purchase of flags.  Gould assembled a group of volunteers who faithfully planted flags at street corners for the length of the borough’s 43 blocks for more than a decade.          
In 2013 Gould handed over responsibility of Flags for Freedom to Crest Memorial teacher Jeannine Yecco, a longtime volunteer with Flags for Freedom.  Yecco, who teaches writing for math to her eighth-grade classes, will have her eighth graders determine the number of flags needed to cover every intersection of the borough, and verify the cost of the project given the price per gross of flags.  
Although the Wildwood Crest Education Association contributed to the expense of the flags many Wildwood Crest businesses contributed to the project, including the Bal Harbor Motel, Attache Motel, Reges Oceanfront, Wild Burrito, Red Horse Motel, Tony’s Produce, Imperial 500 Motel, J. Byrne Agency, Diamond Beach Bums, Fitzpatrick’s Crest Tavern, Pierce Guyon & Schozolek, Tangiers Motel, Chris Henderson Realty, Perfect Cutz, Leader Printers, Little Italy Restaurant, Olympic Motor Inn, Gold Crest Motel, Crest Savings Bank, Corino Law Office, Morey’s Piers, and the Adventurer Inn.
Many of the local businesses contribute to the project each year because the owners feel strongly that Flags for Freedom is a worthwhile community project that properly signifies the sentiments of the community on Patriots’ Day.