Wyoming’s State Flag Is Flying In South Carolina Hurricane Relief Efforts

An Evanston man is proudly flying Wyoming’s true colors in South Carolina.

Jaron Fry signed up to help during emergency relief efforts for his company, Sun Coast Resources. He’s one of the many truck drivers who have responded to Hurricane Helene-affected areas to bring in much-needed fuel.

To find his truck amid the hundreds if not thousands of relief trucks that are flowing into the South, all you have to do is look for the Wyoming state flag.

The story of how he came by that flag is one that shows the Cowboy State’s generous and giving spirit, and it’s a chain of events that has personally inspired Fry, a 27-year resident of the Cowboy State.

“I was on vacation when Hurricane Helene hit,” Fry told Cowboy State Daily. “I had signed up for the emergency response team with our company, but I’d never gotten a call. I thought, ‘Well maybe I don’t have the right credentials or something like that.’”

It turned out his employer was just waiting for him to finish his vacation before calling him up for relief effort duty. So, when Fry returned to work last week on Monday, he got his marching orders. He was headed for South Carolina.

There wasn’t much time to think about the trip and get ready. He threw together a few changes of clothing and was soon on his way to Tennessee to fill up with fuel, then on to South Carolina —loaded up and trucking, as the old “Smokey and the Bandit” movie’s theme song goes, with a long way to go, and a short time to get there.

Like anyone who’s in a little bit of a hurry to go somewhere as fast as the law will allow, Fry forgot a few things. Which he only discovered once he arrived at his destination.

These were little things like shampoo and soap, not to mention a shaving set, toothpaste and a toothbrush. Ordinarily these are things he’d get at a truck stop. But this trip had been a rush job, and he didn’t even think about them until he’d arrived in South Carolina.

“Then I was stuck in the staging yard, and I couldn’t really leave to get anything,” Fry said.

Wyoming Flags Flying Over Syria And The South

Fry was just planning to do without the things he forgot. But there was one thing he really, really wanted to find a way to get.

A Wyoming flag.

The reason he was so determined to get one has a little back story of its own.

“My son was deployed in June to Syria,” Fry said. “And when he arrived there, he didn’t have a Wyoming flag or a U.S. flag, and that was what he wanted. So, I got him three U.S. flags and someone else got him a Wyoming flag. We also made him an Evanston Fire department flag, and all the firefighters and EMTs signed it from Evanston.”

While Fry was in South Carolina his son called to thank him for the flags.

“And I’m going, I’m way out here, too, and I’m not representing Wyoming,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “You can do it all the way over there in Syria. I need to get a flag on my truck.”

It would be solidarity with his son. And it would differentiate his truck from all the other states. So Fry started searching online for flag stores in bigger cities where he might be able to find a Wyoming flag along the way.

But the nearest shop to him was closed on a weekend and wouldn’t open until Monday.

It’s A Small World After All

Fry was ready to give up on his seemingly unlikely personal quest to fly the Wyoming flag in South Carolina just as his son in Syria was doing, when an Evanston friend named Angie Hintz called him up. She’d seen his posts on Facebook about coming down to help Hurricane Helene victims.

“She was telling me her daughter Kelsi Powers lived in the area, and I was like, ‘Oh, where is she,’” Fry said. “And she lived just a couple hours north of me.”

Powers and his daughter had been cheerleaders together during school in Evanston, so Fry decided to check up on her and see how she was doing.

During the conversation, it came up that Fry had inconveniently forgotten a few things like shampoo and soap — things that he would normally just get at a truck stop, but hadn’t had time to attend to on his fast-track trip down, with ordinary trucking limits suspended to facilitate getting fuel and other essentials into the area.

While they were chatting, Fry decided to ask Powers if she knew of any places where he might find a Wyoming flag to buy.

What happened next shocked him. Powers texted him back, “No problem. Ordered it from Amazon, it’ll be here tomorrow morning!”

Just Pay It Forward

Fry was flabbergasted, and a little embarrassed. He hadn’t meant for her to go to such trouble for him. He had just wanted to find a store that he could eventually work into his appointed travels.

He tried getting her to let him give her some cash via Venmo, but she wasn’t having it.

“Just pay it forward,” she told him.

When the flag arrived the next morning, Fry was still stuck at the staging area, unable to leave and meet her anywhere.

That didn’t matter to Hintz either.

“OK, I’ve got an errand to run, and then I’ll be down there,” she texted him.

Fry couldn’t believe it.

“I was like, ‘What!? No way!’” Fry said.

But she couldn’t be talked out of making the run, which was a two-hour drive for herself and her husband Mike.

And, frustratingly, she still wouldn’t share her Venmo information either.

“Being from Wyoming, too, I think she wanted that flag on the back of this truck as bad as I did,” Fry said.

Wyoming Generosity

When Powers arrived, in typical Wyoming fashion, she had not just brought Fry a flag. She had also brought shampoo and soap, as well as all the other things Fry had mentioned forgetting.

In fact, she didn’t just bring one bottle of shampoo and one bar of soap either. She brought several of each item, as well as a few other things he hadn’t mentioned at all that she figured might be nice, like razors and hand wipes.

“Believe it or not, but a lot of the guys down here didn’t have shampoo either,” Fry said. “So I set them out for all the guys to take one. And one guy asked me about a razor and I was like, ‘Actually, I do. I didn’t ask for one, but she brought a whole pack of razors for us!’”

Many of the guys tried paying Fry for the donated items, which he could not accept.

“I’m like, ‘Guys, I didn’t pay anything for any of this, so I can’t charge you anything,” he said. “But a lot of guys got use out of what she brought, and we were all so grateful for it.”

On top of all the toiletries, Hintz also brought some homemade bread and turkey and cheese for sandwiches. That came in mighty handy when Fry was unable to make the breakfast time slot on Sunday because he was too tied up loading trucks with fuel.

“They’re catering our food, but we only get the meal if we can make the particular timeframe,” Fry said.

And, since it was the breakfast time slot he missed, that meant he didn’t get lunch either, because that’s when the lunch sack is distributed.

“What a perfect time for her to show up with bread, turkey and cheese,” Fry said. “And it was the best turkey sandwich I’ve ever had in my life. It really hit the spot.”

Representing The 307

Several of the other truck drivers are quite jealous, Fry said, of the Wyoming flag that’s now flying from his truck. They’re wishing they’d thought about bringing down a state flag. Or that they had the kind of network from back home that would lead to someone local driving two hours to bring them a state flag to fly.

Fry, for his part, couldn’t be prouder to show off a little Wyoming spirit, and all that comes with it.

“I tell them yeah, you’re not going to be able to find (state flags) over here,” Fry said. “But I guess you could get an American flag. That’d be cool.”

But it’s still not 307 cool, and Fry really appreciates that in a new way now.

“This is probably one of the cooler experiences I’ve ever had in my life,” Fry said. “You hear about stuff like this happening all the time, but in the middle of a hurricane? Where people’s lives are being lost? Some guy flying a flag on the back of his truck is probably not the biggest priority in the world. But someone out there from Wyoming still made it happen.”

Fry also loves that he’s showing off that Wyoming spirit in an area of the country that doesn’t know a lot about the Cowboy State.

“I thought I would bring that Wyoming spirit out here to the east coast, and maybe show them that we really are a state up there,” Fry said, chuckling a little. “I’ve not always been a Wyoming knight, if you will. I’ve only lived here about 27 years. But I’ve tried to adapt that cowboy spirit, and, hopefully, somebody’s watching and we’ll pass that on to their generation.”

Fry has attached his Wyoming state flag like a badge of honor to his truck using zip ties and plans to give it a test run soon.

“I’m hoping it will hold up when we get down to Florida,” Fry said. “With Milton headed that way, there could be hurricane-force wind, so I don’t know how long it would hold up to that.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.