Pilot Point High School students remember Daniel Flag

By Joe Fragano

Staff Writer

Family, friends and teammates gathered at the Pilot Point High School baseball field on March 16 to celebrate the life of Daniel Flagg and to dedicate a memorial that will be a constant reminder of the friend and ballplayer that Flagg was.

After Flagg’s passing in the summer of last year, students at PPHS were forced to reconcile with one of the hardest things a teenager can go through: losing a friend. After taking some time to grieve, it was not long before some students at the high school started coming up with ways to honor the life of their classmate.

T-shirts adorned with Flagg’s nickname, “Danny Dimes,” popped up all over the school, and the senior class at PPHS painted a parking spot in Flagg’s honor with the same design. The memorial statue in the shape of a home plate featuring a photo of Flagg and an inscription is just the latest gesture PPHS students have made to honor Flagg’s memory.

“What I’m really most proud of is that our kids stepped up to the bat on this,” Southard said at the memorial. “This was all done by our kids. They led the charge. They wanted to do the monument, they wrote the inscription … they even built the stand and installed it. We wanted the kids to be a big part of this, … and they stepped up to the plate. I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

The ceremony on March 16 prior to Pilot Point’s home game against Whitesboro started with Flagg’s family members and a few of his teammates installing a banner with the same “Danny Dimes” artwork Flagg’s classmates wear in his honor. Bearcats’ seniors Dravyn Stanley, Aidan Jezek and J.J. Emery installed the banner before a short invocation was given, followed by a moment of silence.

As PPISD continues moving towards a period of extreme growth in the next few years, it is reasonable to assume that a new baseball field in a new location may be part of that growth. The administration at PPHS considered that probability and ensured that the Daniel Flagg memorial could be transported and reinstalled at a new location in the future if need be.

“It’s a lasting remembrance of Daniel,” Southard said. “It’s not going to go away when this field goes away. That’s the way we wanted it. That was a big driving force in why we did this. … At some point we’re going to move from here, so we wanted to make sure that we could take this with us.”