Honoring our Heroes

Thank you to all our sponsors, volunteers, and everyone to came out to support our event. Most of all, thank you to the heroes in our community who we had the honor of paying tribute to throughout the last week.

This year was the third annual Upstate Field of Honor, but we were only a small part of both the celebration of our great country's 250th birthday and the somber remembrance of the tragedy that struck our nation on September 11, 2001.

While we may find ourselves in the midst political division, social what-aboutism, and extremes on both sides of the aisle, our event is more than flags in a field. It's a reminder of the ones we've lost, the ones who inspired us with their lives -- and sometimes deaths -- and the quintessentially American drive to strive for something greater.

This year, dozens of flags flew in honor of our families', community's, and country's heroes. As we walked the field, each flag represented the love of one person for another.

Together, those flags became a field of stars rising up from the grass and red clay of an earth-bound field Pickens County, the stripes reminding us that freedom comes at a cost, but that cost must never compromise our national integrity.

The 2026 Upstate Field of Honor has ended, the poles have been removed, the holes filled in, and the flags given to their sponsors, but our belief in the heroism represented by that field cannot be so easily dismantled. Some of us honored local war heroes, some honored those who served in times of peace, others honored those who never served but inspired them all the same. Our heroes come in many forms, and it has been our great privelege to be able to help honor them once again.