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Denver apartment wanted Gold Star daughter to remove banner from window

Americans hang Gold Star banners in their windows to represent a family member lost in service to our country. For one apartment complex in Denver, the banner represented a violation.
A woman in Denver was ordered to take down the Gold Star Banner that hangs in memory of her father, who died in Iraq.

DENVER — She didn’t think it would be a problem: the 15-by-8-inch banner hanging from her window.

The little banner has huge significance to Nistasha Perez. It’s a Gold Star flag, representing her father, SSG. Laurent J. West, who was killed by an improvised explosive device in Iraq on March 11, 2008.

Back in April, she got a notice from her apartment complex, Veranda Highpointe near I-25 and Hampden, to remove it, claiming the flag violates apartment rules.

A woman in Denver was ordered to take down the Gold Star Banner that hangs in memory of her father, who died in Iraq. 

“I received a note that said I wasn’t in compliance with their rules and that I would receive a $75 fine if I did not take it down immediately,” Perez said.

The rule cited by the management company in Perez’s lease is:

DRAPES AND SHADES. Drapes or shades installed by Residents, when allowed, must be lined in white and present a uniform exterior appearance.

“I am confused how the quoted section of my lease (sic) concerns my banner. It is neither a shade or a drape,” Perez wrote in response to a demand letter asking her to remove the flag or face a $75 fine from the company.

Perez told Next that back in April, she tried to explain the significance of the flag to apartment management in person at the time. She thought they understood the significance and chose not to pursue the removal of the flag.

Then she got another notice this week, days before Memorial Day.

“As you can understand, receiving this demand for further action during the week of Memorial Day was especially traumatizing,” she wrote in a follow up letter to the apartment complex this week.

Perez said she could hang the banner inside, but that’s not the point of it.

“It’s so important to have it facing out because I know what my dad did,” she said. “It’s mostly a thing that other people can forget…like you don’t forget that your father isn’t there, but other people can.”

Her father, SSG Laurent J. West was a family man who shared many passions with his young stepdaughters.

A woman in Denver was ordered to take down the Gold Star Banner that hangs in memory of her father, who died in Iraq. 

“He was the smartest man I have ever met,” Perez said. “He was kind of the nerd that I was as well…that’s why I have his Predator mask.”

Perez said West would also stick up for anyone.

“He was never above writing an angry letter to be like why are you doing this,” she said. ““When they wouldn’t let me graduate from high school in 3 years, he wrote a letter. When they wouldn’t let Madison compete in a science fair, he wrote a letter just kind of being like hey why are you doing this? This is a silly law you shouldn’t have it – let’s go beyond it and see what’s out there.”

Like father, like daughter.

West was deployed to Iraq in 2007. His mission was a noble one: building schools for girls there who had never attended school before.

“I was in college, my sister was doing really well in school and that he was going to give that chance to other girls and that was really important to him,” Perez said.

Then, on March 11, 2008, nine days before Perez was to graduate from college, she got a terrible phone call.

“My mom called me and told me they had killed him,” she recalls. “I don’t think I totally understood it at first…you don’t really understand information like that.”

Perez and her family joined a new family.

“We are a Gold Star Family,” she said. “And yes, it sucks. Sometimes we wish we weren’t, but that’s reality.”

Gold Star flags and banner date back to World War I. Families used to hang them in their windows. Blue stars indicated anyone who was serving in an active conflict. That blue star became a gold star if the loved one died.

Perez tried to explain this to her apartment office staff.

A woman in Denver was ordered to take down the Gold Star Banner that hangs in memory of her father, who died in Iraq. 

Then on Thursday, after 9NEWS called the office staff, there was an about face.

“We certainly apologize for any miscommunication and we are working with the resident to resolve the issue but we take her concern very seriously and, no, we’re not asking her to remove the flag,” a representative for Cardinal Group Management, which runs Veranda Highpointe, said in a voicemail to 9NEWS Thursday afternoon.

A development that pleases a proud daughter, working to keep her father’s memory alive.

“We’re his legacy and we want to keep it as alive as possible and let people know as much about him and what he did,” she said.

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