How everything started...

After serving my country as a United States Marine, my life changed in an instant. On April 23rd, 2013, an IED in Afghanistan took my eye and left me asking a question I didn't have an answer to: what comes next? The military gives you identity, structure, purpose. When that's gone, the silence is loud.

I spent months searching for something to fill that space. Something that felt real. Something that meant something. I found it in my workshop in late 2013 — surrounded by wood, sawdust, and the quiet focus of building something with my hands. I started crafting wooden American flags, one piece at a time, and something clicked. Not just the wood. Something inside me.

Every flag I make starts from raw material and ends as something a family will hang in their home, pass down, or give to someone they love. I don't outsource. I don't mass produce. There's no factory, no shortcuts, no algorithm deciding what gets made. Just me, my tools, and every ounce of pride and passion I have left to give.

I've built Samuel's Flags into something I'm genuinely proud of — not just as a business, but as a mission. Over a decade since that day in Afghanistan, every order that comes in is a reminder that the sacrifice was worth it. Every flag that ships out carries a piece of that story with it.

When you support Samuel's Flags, you're not just buying a piece of wood and paint. You're telling a veteran that what he went through mattered. That the years of service, the cost of combat, and the long road after — all of it meant something. And that means everything to me.