Making family proud

Peggy Green of north Spokane is proud of her grandson.

Not only is Ryan Green a senior airman stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, but during his deployment at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, he has received special notice for his volunteerism and patriotism.

Green had been walking by a room on the base filled with American flags that had been flown in aircraft over Afghanistan. Many people request the flags that have flown aboard 455th Air Expeditionary Wing aircraft on combat missions as gifts or in honor of a soldier.

The flags hadn’t been folded properly in their boxes and it began to bother the 23-year-old former Spokane resident, who is also a member of the honor guard at Mountain Home.

He immediately volunteered to fold all of the flags. Anyone who has ever seen a properly folded flag knows that there are special rules to go about it. The corners must be precise, the stripes aligned and it must be tight.

Green, the crew chief of an F-15E, recruited another crew chief to help him during his free time. He and Airman 1st Class Cesar Zayas have folded more than over 700 flags.

“That’s the kind of kid he is,” Peggy Green said about her grandson. “When he did that, I thought, ‘Well, that would be Ryan.’”

Green, who attended Whitman Elementary School and played hockey for the Spokane Americans before he moved to Seattle with his mother, was recently featured in a story in the Bagram Air Force Base paper.

He said in the story, “As a member of the honor guard, folding the flag is something that I really take pride in because it stands for so much.”

“Every flag gets folded—every one of them. Airman Green makes you feel good about it because he is so passionate about it,” Zayas was quoted saying in the Bagram paper.

Peggy Green said that her grandson has been deployed in Afghanistan for the last six months and should be back in the United States at the end of the month. She hopes to seem him this summer when he comes to Spokane to attend his cousin’s wedding.

She said he wants to someday become an officer and wants to fly helicopters.

“He works for it and he’ll probably do what he wants,” she said.

Peggy Green said that she was very close with her grandson when he was living in Spokane.

His mother, Wendy Green Landsiedel of Everett, was a single mom, but she kept him in line.

“He wasn’t an angel, but he found out it doesn’t pay to get in trouble,” Peggy Green said.

Her pride is apparent when she talks about her grandson. She said that he is sincere and sympathetic of others.

“I just think what he did there—I’m very proud of him,” she said.