Who stole a tribute to Queen Elizabeth? Flag at Key West landmark taken, then found
The city of Key West decorated its iconic Southernmost Point marker with purple sash and the British flag in honor of Queen Elizabeth, who died Sept. 8. The display went up on Friday and was supposed to stay there through her funeral on Monday.
But on Sunday morning, someone unceremoniously took the Union Jack down, crumpled it up and walked off with it.
A video taken from a webcam fixed on the Southernmost Point showed three men standing by the buoy. One man, holding a leashed dog, poses for a photo by the display. Then, another man wearing a red shirt lowers the flag and removes it, shoving it under his arm.
Key West Mayor Teri Johnston on Monday said she wants police to investigate, as they did on New Year’s Day after two tourists set a fire that scorched the buoy’s paint job. Two men, also caught on the webcam, await trial on felony criminal property damage charges.
But the flag hasn’t made the Key West police blotter yet. And it’s no longer missing.
The Union Jack raised in a seaside corner of Key West to honor Britain’s longest-reigning monarch was recovered by a local man who spotted it on the ground near the buoy on Sunday.
“I knew who it belonged to,” said Fred Bushey, of Key West, who picked up the rumpled flag and stored it for safekeeping Sunday. He had taken photos of the queen’s memorial when it went up Friday.
He found it crumpled on the ground with some discarded water bottles and a paper cup.
READ MORE: How did Key West land up with a giant buoy as a tourist attraction? Here’s the story
Bushey, the general manager at Rick’s Entertainment Complex on Duval Street, worked late all weekend and when he found the flag, didn’t know someone had swiped it earlier that day. He figured maybe someone was offended and took it down. He picked it up and took it home.
“I went back there today and was going to try to rehang it,” Bushey said Monday. He stopped, though, when he noticed some burly bikers wearing American flag-printed shorts by the buoy.
“I’m not going to hang another country’s flag in front of them,” Bushey said, laughing. “Read your crowd.”
The flag was returned to the city Monday night. Bushey handed it over to Paul Menta, a Key West rum distillery owner, on behalf of the Conch Republic, the group that celebrates the 1982 symbolic secession of the Keys from the United States.
“I folded it and it’s back home,” Menta said Tuesday while at the Southernmost Point marker at Whitehead and South streets. Only a bare flag pole remained from the memorial made to the queen on Sept. 16.
‘Mourning the loss’
Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, visited the Florida Keys in 1991 on the Royal Yacht Britannia. They first arrived at Dry Tortugas National Park and Fort Jefferson, which is 70 miles west of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico, said Andy Newman, media relations director of the Monroe County Tourist Development Council.
The royal couple was then welcomed to the city by then-Monroe County Mayor Wilhelmina Harvey, who gave them a conch shell, Newman said.
“The queen is such an important icon in the world, and she’s such a strong woman and incredible leader, that we are here to pay homage to her,” Mayor Johnston said in a statement Friday for the unveiling of the Southernmost Point display. “We join the world today in mourning the loss of such an incredible human being.”
The Southernmost Point marker is a 20-ton concrete monument built to resemble a navigational buoy. It’s painted red, yellow, black and white, and was installed in 1983 to designate the southernmost point of land in the continental United States.
It is a favorite spot for tourists visiting the city to snap a photo of themselves standing by the Atlantic Ocean. The buoy was in the spotlight in January after vandals set a fire at the landmark.
Johnston told the Miami Herald/FLKeysNews on Monday that she wants the people who stole the flag arrested and charged.
“Just like the damage to the buoy,” she said, “this was an act of incredible disrespect and should be pursued.”
This story was originally published September 19, 2022 at 11:03 AM with the headline "Who stole a tribute to Queen Elizabeth? Flag at Key West landmark taken, then found."
