For Veterans Day, WTVMF co-founder and executive director Ellen Gustafson teamed up with Andrew and Melissa Shea, the filmmakers behind the documentary Flag Day, for an op-ed in The Detroit News. The piece looks at Three Oaks, Michigan, home of what it calls the largest Flag Day celebration in the world, where neighbors who vote, worship, and see the world differently still show up for one another. Drawing on WTVMF’s 2025 Veterans Civic Health Index, the authors make the case that veterans have long modeled what it means to put country over party, and that the rest of us can follow their lead in our own communities.
As Navy veteran Albert Brayboy Jr. puts it in the film, “The flag isn’t Republican or Democratic. It’s for all of us.”