HOA Cut Down a 78-Year-Old Widow's Flagpole and Came for Her House — They Forgot Who Typed the Rules

The Stump

On the morning of July 3, Margie raised the flag at seven o'clock and drove to the cemetery.

She had decided it the night before, lying awake. She would not stand in her driveway and watch. She would not give Craig Dunmore that picture to post. If they were going to do it, they could do it to an empty house, and she would be where Arne was.

The National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona lies at the north edge of Phoenix, thousands of white headstones in long straight rows across the desert. It was ninety-four degrees at nine in the morning. She bought a small flag at the gas station on Cave Creek Road and pushed it into the dirt beside his stone.

ARNE T SORENSEN. CPL US MARINE CORPS. VIETNAM. JUN 3 1947 – NOV 14 2023. SEMPER FIDELIS.

She sat on the folding stool she kept in the trunk and told him about it. All of it. The red paper, the retyped pages, the microphone, the word confusion. She had talked to him out loud for nineteen months, and she wasn't about to stop.

"You would have gone down to that clubhouse and taken the microphone off the stand," she said. "And they'd have arrested you. So it's probably for the best it's me."

A groundskeeper went by on a mower. A hawk sat on a light pole. She stayed until eleven, when the heat made her dizzy, then drove home the long way.

She knew before she turned the corner. There was too much sky.

The pole was gone.

Where it had stood for thirty-eight years, there was a ring of old concrete in the gravel, still marked with the letters Arne had scratched into it with a nail, A.S. 4-87, and in the middle of the ring a stub of galvanized steel about eight inches high, sliced clean and shining in the sun. Little curls of metal lay around it like shavings from a pencil. The rest of the pole was nowhere. The brass ball from the top was nowhere.

The flag was nowhere.

Margie got out of the car and stood in the gravel. The heat came up through the soles of her shoes.

Ines's car pulled in across the street. She had come home early from her shift. She ran over in her scrubs.

"Margie. Oh, Margie. I was at work. Señora Contreras next door saw it. She said they were here eleven minutes. Two guys and the truck. They had a paper they showed her."

"Where's the flag?"

Ines looked at the stump. Then at the curb.

There was a black contractor bag at the curb, the heavy kind, tied at the top. Next to it sat two other bags of palm fronds and grass clippings from the crew's morning work in the common areas. The bags would be picked up by the bulk trash service on Monday.

Margie walked to the curb. Her hands were shaking so badly she could not untie the knot. Ines tore it open for her.

Palm fronds. Gravel dust. Cut weeds. A broken sprinkler head. Ines dug with both arms. Margie stood beside her, holding the edge of the bag. They went through all three bags, on their knees on the hot sidewalk.

The flag was not in any of them.

"Maybe they kept it," Ines said. "Maybe they're going to give it back."

Margie did not say anything.

The mail carrier came at three-forty. He had a green certified slip and a clipboard. Margie signed with a hand she could hardly control.

The envelope was from the Law Office of Lionel D. Sturdevant, PLLC, Scottsdale.

NOTICE OF LIEN AND INTENT TO FORECLOSE.

This firm represents Desert Willow Estates Homeowners Association. Our client has recorded a lien against your property at 1847 East Desert Willow Circle, Mesa, Arizona, for the following delinquent amounts:

Special Assessment (due 6/1/2025): $2,400.00
Late fee: $15.00
Regular assessments, June and July: $190.00
Violation fines: $500.00
Removal of nonconforming structure (7/3/2025): $2,350.00
Attorney fees and collection costs: $1,175.00

TOTAL DUE: $6,630.00

Because delinquent assessments on your account exceed $1,200.00, the Association is entitled under A.R.S. § 33-1807 to foreclose its lien in the same manner as a real property mortgage. If payment in full is not received within thirty (30) days, our client has authorized this office to commence a foreclosure action against your home without further notice.

She read it standing in the kitchen. Then she sat down in Arne's chair at the table, because her legs told her to.

Two thousand three hundred fifty dollars. For the removal of a nonconforming structure.

She turned the envelope over. The postmark said June 30. The bill for the removal had gone into the mail three days before anyone touched the pole.

They had cut down her husband's flagpole, thrown his flag in the trash, and sent her the bill for the saw. And if she didn't pay it in thirty days, they would take the house he had carried her into in 1987.

Ines stayed until dark. Nils called twice. Margie told them both she was fine and that she was going to bed.

She did not go to bed. She sat at the kitchen table all night with the carbon copy of the 1987 approval letter, the fifty-two retyped pages, and the letter from Scottsdale, and did not read any of them.

At 6:55 the next morning, the Fourth of July, she got up from the table, put on her housecoat, and went out to the front yard the way someone in that house had every morning for thirty-eight years.

It was already eighty-nine degrees. The sky was enormous and white. Somewhere down the block, somebody was setting up a barbecue.

Margie stood beside the eight-inch stump with nothing in her hands.

At seven o'clock, for the first time since 1987, there was nothing to raise.

And in twenty-nine days, they would come for the house.