Durango resident shocked to find viral photo of man he says is his own father

“It’s a picture of him doing what he did every day, and that was to be the best person he could be,” Bryan Welker said.

Durango resident Bryan Welker says he’s 99.9 percent sure it’s a photo of his father, Richard Welker, getting up from his wheelchair to carry the flag. The image with the caption “The only person standing… is the man in the wheelchair” has been circulating online for years. Welker first saw it in an email chain he received Friday.

When Bryan Welker opened his email Friday morning, he was shocked to find a viral photo that has been circulating the Internet for more than two decades depicting a man Welker said was obviously his own father.

The photo shows a man in a wheelchair trying his best to stand as flag bearers in a parade approach his position on the parade route. The image shows about five other people to his left who remain seated on the sidewalk. A caption at the top left reads: “The only person standing… is the man in the wheelchair.” »

Even though the man’s face is turned away from the camera, Welker said he is 99.9 percent sure it is his father: Richard Welker, a U.S. Navy veteran and professor of American history and father of three who died in 2006 in Riverside, California.

What makes it so safe?

The man wears the same iconic jacket and unmistakable plaid pants that his father wore. And the wheelchair has green armrests and a red bag hanging on the back – just like his father’s. When he forwarded the image to the rest of his family, they all agreed that it couldn’t be anyone else.

“It was definitely one of my proudest moments,” Welker said after opening the email and realizing who was in the photo. “It’s a picture of him doing what he did every day, and that was to be the best person he could be.”

Welker opened the email on Friday, which fittingly was National Flag Day. He said it was incorporated into a mass email intended to stoke feelings of patriotism and possibly contempt for those who are not patriotic enough.

He had never seen the photo before, but it has been circulating for years and shared on websites like Reddit, Pinterest and old online message boards. He believes the photo was taken in the late 1990s in Riverside, California.

Durango resident Bryan Walker said he opened an email Friday to find a viral image of his father standing as a flag bearer in a parade decades ago in California. (Courtesy of Brian Welker)

The photograph accompanied by the caption has sparked heated debates in some Internet circles over modern America’s alleged lack of patriotism. But ironically, Welker said the most remarkable trait of his father’s love for his country was the subtlety with which he expressed it.

“He didn’t wear red, white and blue makeup and yell at people,” Welker said. “He wasn’t saying, ‘How are you going to make America great?’ » Do you know what he did? He showed it.

According to Welker’s father, the greatest thing about being an American was having the freedom to choose whether or not to stand for the flag, his son said.

“When he was in the Navy, he said he was always happy to return to an American port,” Welker said. “Because in every country he went to, there were always people trying to get out, and in America, people were just trying to get in.”

Welker said what touched him most was that someone else was moved enough to stand up and take the photo. For this reason, Richard Welker did in death as he did in life, which was to lead by example and allow his actions to speak louder than words, Welker said.

“He wasn’t a radical patriot, he was an everyday patriot,” Welker said. “But in the Boy Scouts, he made sure we got our patriotic merit badges, he made sure we understood that the flag wasn’t just a symbol, it’s a representation of how you feel. “

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