Confederate flags spark mystery, then a 'three-ring circus' in Ohio city

HARRISON, Ohio – Ryan Grubbs’ phone started ringing a few days after Christmas, while he stood in his kitchen making chicken soup for his sick wife.

Grubbs, who was less than a week away from being sworn in as mayor of Harrison, often got calls at home about city business. But on this day, they kept coming. Friends. Colleagues. Neighbors. Everyone wanted an answer to the same question.

Why did he put a Confederate flag in the middle of town?

Grubbs didn’t know what they were talking about. He didn’t put a Confederate flag anywhere.

Then a friend texted him a photo, and there it was, one of the most divisive symbols in America, fluttering in the breeze above an official-looking sign that read, “Welcome to Harrison, Ohio.” Right below those words, in slightly smaller print, was his name and new title, “Mayor Ryan Grubbs.”

The display sat on a privately owned field next to a church on Harrison Avenue, one of the city’s busiest roads. Anyone passing through town could see it.

As he answered call after call in his kitchen that day, Grubbs’ frustration grew. Without warning, someone had hijacked his name and reputation, tying him to a flag millions of Americans consider a symbol of white supremacy.

“I do not like being associated with the flag,” he said. “That is not who I am.”

In the days and weeks that followed, two more displays of Confederate flags and signs went up at two other locations in Harrison, a city of 13,000 about 20 miles west of Cincinnati. TV news crews arrived. Social media overflowed with photos and speculation. Soon, more people got caught up in the chaos.

A Black teenager who could see one of the displays from her front porch said the flag made her uncomfortable in her own neighborhood. The owners of an auto repair shop across the street from a flag said it tarnished their names and business. A city councilman who spoke out against the displays got arrested on charges of vandalizing one of them.

Not everyone in Harrison shared their concerns about the flag. Some said it was just a piece of cloth, an old symbol of rebellion or Southern pride, a relic with no real power or meaning.

But for Grubbs and others whose lives were upended by the flag’s arrival, it was something more. If the flag had no power or meaning, they said, people wouldn’t still be flying it, in Harrison or anywhere else.

“It may be just a flag to some people,” Grubbs said. “But it’s not to others.”

A new mayor tries to clear his name

Grubbs' first week as mayor did not go the way he would’ve liked. Instead of easing into the job with meetings about road projects and budgets, he spent days talking about Confederate flags.

Grubbs had lived most of his 49 years in Harrison, leaving only for college and for missionary work with his church. He and his wife, Andi, raised four children in the city and he served for a decade as a Republican member of city council.

Yet the only thing many of Harrison’s residents knew about Grubbs in early January was that the new mayor’s name was attached to those flags.

Harrison is about 95% white, according to the U.S. Census, and it wasn’t hard for Grubbs to imagine why Black residents, in particular, might be concerned if they believed their city government and mayor endorsed the Confederate flag.

So Grubbs set out to assure them, and everyone else, that wasn’t the case. He tried to return every call and answer every email. He promised, again and again, that the flags didn’t represent him or the city.

His toughest conversation came the first day the flags went up, when he called one of his daughter’s friends, who is Black. He worried she or her family might see the flags and signs before he could explain.

“If anyone wants to talk,” he told her, “I’m here to talk.”

He knew, though, that talking could only get him so far. Grubbs wanted to find out who put up the displays and what, if anything, the city could do about them.

He soon learned that Steve Hickey, a longtime Harrison resident, owned the three properties where the flags were flying: Two rental homes and the empty field on Harrison Avenue.

Hickey, a former Harrison police officer, had a bumpy history with city government. His police personnel file shows he resigned in April 2004, but media reports at the time said he’d been suspended before he resigned for allegedly interfering with a sheriff’s investigation of his brother in Dearborn County, Indiana.

The Dearborn County Register reported in 2004 that a disciplinary hearing determined Hickey violated 21 department rules and behaved as if “he had a score to settle.”

But that was 20 years ago. No one seemed to know for certain what Hickey was up to now. If the flags were some kind of protest, what was he protesting?

Grubbs said he tried several times to find out. He said he sent Hickey emails and left voicemail messages but got no response. Hickey also did not respond to multiple attempts by The Enquirer to reach him on his cell and work phones and at the properties displaying the flags.

“I just wanted to have a conversation with the guy,” Grubbs said.

About a month later, in February, Hickey added about a dozen toilets to the largest flag display on Harrison Avenue. He arranged them like chairs around the base of the flagpole. Hand-written signs on some toilets said “mayor” and “council,” but Hickey offered no other explanation.

City officials, however, had a way to fight back this time. While the First Amendment protected Hickey’s right to put up the flags and signs on his property, the toilets violated zoning codes and would have to go.

Before they did, Hickey finally broke his silence, saying in a TV interview he wanted the city to “clean up” an auto repair shop across the street from one of his rental properties. The flags and toilets were his way of protesting the city’s lack of action, Hickey said.

He also said he didn’t understand why some people were making such a fuss about the Confederate flag.

“I don’t know why society has become offended by everything,” Hickey said. “They’re offended by the air they breathe nowadays.”

A young neighbor confronts the flag's history

Harrison is home to fewer than 200 Black residents, according to the census. Kaylani Durrough is one of them.

The 15-year-old high school sophomore said she didn’t think much about the flags when they went up, even when one appeared in her neighbor’s front yard. She preferred hanging out at home or working on her latest art project to keeping up with news from around town.

Soon, though, she couldn’t avoid the subject. The flag at her neighbor’s house on Harrison Avenue was smaller than the main display in the heart of the city, but it was hard to miss. Her neighborhood began showing up on TV news and social media.

Kaylani’s mom, Martha Durrough, decided to talk to Kaylani about it. She told her about the flag’s history, about its connection to slavery and the Civil War, about the debate over its meaning.

“After that,” Kaylani said, “I felt very uncomfortable.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d felt that way since moving to Harrison with the Durrough family as a foster child five years ago.

Kaylani said she’s aware, wherever she goes, that she doesn’t look like most people in Harrison. Her parents and siblings are white. Most of her neighbors, classmates and teachers are white. Usually, she said, that’s fine. But not always.

Her mom said Kaylani’s skin color makes her an easy target. There have been cruel remarks from other kids. And two years ago, while walking in a park, Kaylani said a man shouted a racial epithet at her. Since then, she rarely goes out alone.

Kaylani said she loves her family and her home, but the world beyond her front porch can be a challenge in ways it isn’t for other teenagers in Harrison.

“I just don’t fit in,” she said.

Upset about the flag, Kaylani’s mom said she asked her neighbor, Tim Ward, why it was there. Ward, who rents the property from Hickey, declined to talk to The Enquirer, but Durrough said he told her the flag was “a symbol of rebellion.”

She replied that it means something else to the Black child she’s raising two doors down.

“Everyone can say it’s not about racism, but that doesn’t make it feel safer,” she said. “I feel like this is sparking a lot of hate in the community, and I wish my family didn’t have to be a part of it.”

Not long after her conversation with her neighbor, Durrough bought a rainbow-colored flag with “World Peace” spelled out in big letters across the center.

It now hangs from her porch.

A business fights the flag next door

Down the street from Kaylani’s house, on the opposite side of the yard with the Confederate flag, sits Hilltop Performance Offroad, the truck and Jeep shop that Hickey said prompted his flag protest.

A sign attached to the flagpole proclaims “HARRISON ZONING ALLOWS JUNKYARDS.”

Ethan and Annie Efkeman, the couple who’ve owned the shop for more than a decade, said they’ve never met Hickey. They said Ward, their neighbor, was an occasional customer who often spent time hanging out at the shop with the staff. Annie said they got to know him so well she used to send him Christmas cards.

She said neither Ward nor Hickey ever raised concerns with them about their business. But late last year, a city inspector said he’d received a complaint about street parking and the dozen or so vehicles that were typically parked in the shop’s lot.

When the inspector found no violations, that seemed to be the end of it. Then, weeks later, Ethan arrived at work one morning to find the flag flying next door.

“It’s horribly offensive,” Annie Efkeman said. “We think it’s disgusting.”

She said the complaint about their business was one thing, but connecting their business to a symbol as divisive as the Confederate flag was shocking. Now, she said, that’s the connection people make if they do a Google search for Hilltop Performance.

“This has really taken a toll on us,” Efkeman said.

Hickey has since lodged additional complaints against Hilltop with the Harrison Fire Department and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Both found no problems. The Efkemans said they’ve sent a cease-and-desist letter to Hickey, warning him to stop making accusations he can’t back up.

Annie Efkeman said she’s not sure her family’s business is the real reason behind Hickey’s flag protest. Some in Harrison believe the root of the problem is a long-running zoning dispute that may have limited Hickey’s ability to develop his property.

Whatever the reason, Efkeman said, it’s a mystery to her what the Confederate flags have to do with any of Hickey’s complaints. There are plenty of ways to resolve a disagreement, she said, and flying those flags doesn’t seem like one.

“If you’re mad,” she said, “deal with it in other ways that aren’t harmful to other people.”

She said a conversation, months ago, would’ve saved everyone a lot of grief. If that had happened, Efkeman said, she and her husband would’ve explained they’re building a new location for their business elsewhere in Harrison.

The shop next to Hickey’s property will close by the end of the year, she said, and his Confederate flag, if it’s still there, will be flying next to an empty lot.

A councilman's meeting, then an arrest

Harrison City Councilman Mike Mains said a conversation was all he wanted when he reached out to Hickey and Ward in January to talk about the flags. After a few weeks, Mains said, Hickey agreed to meet him.

By then, it was mid-February, and Hickey was about to add another, larger sign to the main flag display. The new sign said, “Coming soon: City of Harrison’s HOMELESS CAMP.”

No one knew for certain what that meant, but the flags and signs and toilets were the talk of the town. “I feel like I’m living in an episode of South Park,” one commenter wrote on a community Facebook post. “This just gets dumber and dumber by the day.”

Mains, a mechanical engineer who grew up in Harrison and raised four children in the city, said he wanted to meet Hickey in hopes of convincing him to take down the flags. As a libertarian, Mains said, he knows Hickey has a constitutional right to fly the flags, but he believes they reflect poorly on Harrison.

“We’re not very diverse, but we’re not a racist community,” Mains said. “We’re good people. We’re generous people. We love our neighbors.”

He said the flags also belie Harrison’s history and role in the Civil War. Young men from Harrison fought for the Union and, in 1863, the city was a crossing point for Confederate raiders under the command of Gen. John Hunt Morgan. Back then, the flag was carried by the enemy.

When they finally met, Mains said, Hickey complained to him about Hilltop Performance and, more generally, about city officials. He said he urged Hickey to talk to the mayor and other city officials about his concerns, but Hickey declined.

“It’s just frustrating,” Mains said. “I don’t understand why he just won’t sit down and have a conversation with people.”

According to police reports, the relationship between Mains and Hickey deteriorated in the weeks that followed their meeting. On March 31, police said, Hickey called to report that Mains drove his car onto his property, put up a libertarian yard sign and damaged the large display on Harrison Avenue.

Hickey also blamed Mains for removing some lights that had been shining on the flagpole at one of the locations, and police said they observed a brown substance on other lights that “appeared to be fecal matter.”

Police said Hickey gave them a recording of a conversation he later had with Mains, in which he asked Mains why he drove onto his property.

“Because I’m pissed off,” Mains replied.

Mains, who is charged with misdemeanor counts of trespassing and criminal damaging, responded to questions about the charges in a written statement. "The City of Harrison has been bullied for months now by a man who seeks to sow division in our community," he said. "I stood up to that bully and unfortunately placed myself in a position where the criminal justice system could be weaponized against me."

Mains' fellow council members asked him to resign in April, but he told them he's staying. “It’s been a three-ring circus,” he said.

A few weeks after Mains’ arrest, the Confederate flag near Kaylani’s house and Hilltop Performance came down. No one was sure at the time who had done it, or why, but for several days, no flag flew in the yard.

Less than a week later, a new, taller flagpole went up in the same yard.

A few days after that, a new, larger Confederate flag appeared atop the pole.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: How Confederate flag displays upended lives in Harrison, Ohio