The manager of a Kentucky restaurant says he faced backlash after he hoisted a Ukrainian flag in support of his adoptive son.
Ben Ashlock, the general manager of Colton’s Steak House & Grill in Bardstown, told the Washington Examiner that he received the first of several angry messages from a customer April 9. Customers flooded the restaurant’s phone lines, accusing it of being unpatriotic.
“We had had the flag up for some time,” Ashlock said, giving a rough estimate of 35 days.
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Trouble began when Ashlock received a Facebook message from a customer who had accused him of swapping out a U.S. flag with the Ukrainian flag. Ashlock and his wife, who have 13 children, raised the flag in support of their adopted son, David, whom they adopted from Ukraine and who has hydrocephalus, a medical condition that causes fluid to build up in the brain, according to Today Food.
“Yesterday was a surreal day. We were short-staffed in the kitchen so myself and the other managers were all locked in functions. Suddenly a message comes in on our facebook page,” Ashlock wrote in a Facebook post earlier this month. “I took a minute to address it.”
People began sharing screenshots of “hateful” messages being posted from local Facebook groups with him, and the restaurant began receiving calls from people asking why it had “replaced the American flag” before it eventually decided to stop taking calls, Ashlock said.
“As I have previously stated, there has always been two Texas flags at the front of the store,” Ashlock explained in the post. “So no American flag was replaced. The Texas flag on the right remained and we put a Ukraine flag in the place of the left one. To hopefully eliminate any further confusion, last night we replaced the Texas flag to the right with a USA flag.”
“I think initially there was just a knee-jerk reaction to someone saying we replaced an American flag with a Ukrainian flag,” Ashlock told the Washington Examiner of the incident. “People thought I was trying to be political or controversial.”
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Ashlock said he doesn’t think the criticism of him has evaporated just because it is “less popular” to criticize him in light of the context of his decision.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February, causing millions of Ukrainians to be displaced and tens of thousands of deaths.
