Prattville woman urges city to include Gold Star members in Memorial Day banners

Julianne Hansen pressed Prattville city leaders to keep Gold Star service members fully included in the downtown Memorial Day banner display, warning that her stepson’s empty banner space would turn grief into a public omission outside her gallery.

Speaking at Tuesday night’s Prattville City Council meeting, Hansen said she was addressing the issue not only as the owner of Julianne Hansen Fine Art & Pottery, but as a Gold Star family member. She focused on Kyle Hansen, a Prattville High School graduate who later graduated from the United States Air Force Academy, earned his pilot’s wings and served as a C-17 pilot in the Air Force before dying on active duty in 2017.

Hansen said Kyle’s banner was first displayed for Memorial Day in 2021 and was later restored for Veterans Day. She told council members she had been told this year’s Memorial Day plan would limit displays to Purple Heart recipients, with other veteran banners pushed to June for Prattville’s America 250 celebration. In her view, that would leave the space outside her gallery empty at the very moment the city is preparing to honor military sacrifice.

The city’s own Military Recognition Banner Program says Memorial Day banners honor men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Prattville also says it uses In Memory banners along East Main Street and Memorial Drive, and that nominations are first-come, first-served because banner poles are limited. The city says placement, installation and removal are at its discretion. Veterans Day banners, by contrast, are for all veterans who served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

The dispute lands in a city program that has become a visible part of historic downtown. A 2020 report said Prattville had more than 60 banners honoring veterans, with plans to reuse and expand the display. Hansen’s advocacy has grown alongside the Alabama Poppy Project, which began in 2020 and used more than 1,000 handmade poppies in its first downtown display. By 2025, the exhibit had grown to more than 2,025 handmade ceramic poppies at her gallery.

That project is now moving to USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile for May 22-26, leaving Prattville’s banner poles as an even more important public tribute for families like the Hansens.