The next morning I got up, got dressed, wrote down the number Robert screwed to the base of his flagpole in 1987, drove to the county recorder’s office in Sarasota, and looked up what that number meant, and the HOA that handed me a lawsuit through a car window learned it had picked the wrong widow.
The HOA lawyer had rolled down his window just far enough to tell me the flagpole violated Section 7, that the mural was coming down, that I owed forty-two hundred in fines, that theyd lien my house, that most of the original residents had already sold and it would be smart for me to do the same.
He did not look up the number on the pole. Nobody on that new board ever had.
The number Robert engraved on the flagpole in 1987 was the recording number of the original community declaration, the founding document, which permanently exempts the first homes and their improvements from later rules, and on top of that a federal law forbids any HOA from banning the display of the American flag.
Robert helped build that community. He was the second owner, and when the first declaration was recorded in 1987, it protected the founding homes and the things they built, the clubhouse, the mural, the flagpoles, from being ruled away by any board that came later. Robert knew boards change and memories fade, so he engraved the recording number right on the pole, so the proof could always be found by anyone who bothered to look.
And the flag itself is protected by the Freedom to Display the American Flag Act, a federal law no HOA rule can override. Robert flew that flag every morning of his life, and no Section 7 can take it down.
The lawyer went through it with me. The fines were void. The lien could not attach. The flagpole and the mural were grandfathered by the very declaration the HOA is supposed to enforce, and the flag was federally protected besides.
When the board sent their lawyer back, I did not argue. I handed him the recorded declaration, the exemption, and a printout of the federal flag law, and I said, the number was on the pole the whole time. My husband put it there in 1987. The flag stays, the mural stays, the fines are void, and if you file that lien Ill see you in court and Ill win, and the whole of Lakewood Estates will read about the board that tried to pull down a dead veterans flag.
They dropped it. The mural stayed when the clubhouse was renovated. The flag flies every morning, the way Robert flew it.
It would be smart for you to sell, the lawyer had told me. It was smarter to read the number on the pole. My Robert built this place, and he left the proof in brass, so that when a board with no memory came for his flag, his widow only had to write down a number and drive to the courthouse.