By Jed Blackwell
Editor

U.S. Marine and Inman native Tyrone Edwards recently presented the Greater Inman Area Chamber of Commerce with an Inman flag that was sent to him and which he had flown on two combat missions in Afghanistan.
Tyrone Edwards is proud of his hometown.
Edwards, an air traffic controller in the U.S. Marine Corps, says he’s always felt a deep connection with Inman. That connection persists, even when Edwards is thousands of miles away.
“I grew up here,” Edwards explains. “Inman has given me so much. It’s just a special place to me.”
So special that Edwards would check in on his hometown via the Internet when he was stationed in Japan last year. There, he learned that an old classmate, Kyle Settle, Vice President of the Greater Inman Area Chamber of Commerce, had designed a flag for the City. Edwards knew that he had to get his hands on one of those flags, so he put in an order.
Settle obliged, and Edwards took Inman with him when he was deployed to Afghanistan.
Then, he took things one step further.
Edwards noticed that some of his fellow Marines were enlisting the help of aircraft flying missions. They were giving pilots and crew members flags to fly from the aircraft while on the missions, then would present those flags to those back home. Most of the time, the flags flown were the Stars and Stripes.
Not in Edwards’s case. He wanted Inman’s city flag to fly proudly from those military aircraft.
“I thought it would be neat for the flag to be flown on those missions,” he said. “One was on an AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter, and the other was on a medivac helicopter. I gave them to the pilots, and they flew the flag out the side of the helicopters on the missions.”
On a recent leave, Edwards brought the flag back home and presented it to Settle and the Chamber at a recent meeting.
Settle said his friend’s gesture was truly touching.
“It means a lot,” Settle said.
“We have a lot of people who work and live here, who take pride in Inman, but to have him ask for a flag from Japan, I can’t really express how much that meant to me. It was heartwarming. It makes you feel like you’re on the right track. Then, for him to use his own money, to put the effort in to have the flag framed and to present it to us, I just can’t express what that means. You can’t attach a value to that. We did something very small, and for him to do that, it just shows you what kind of people we have here in Inman.”
Edwards was equally touched by being sent the flag to begin with.
“When I left here, I’d talk to Kyle, or I’d talk to Bessie (Fisher, the Chamber president), and anything that I’d mention I needed, I’d get it in the mail in a care package,” Edwards said. “We take care of each other, and I wanted something from Inman to take with me. It’s nice to take a piece of home with you wherever you go. It’s a comforting feeling to have that with me.”
Edwards is a 2003 graduate of Chapman High School. He and his wife, Megan, have two children, Mackenzie, 4, and Cameron, 1.
For more local news and events, see this week’s Inman Times.