Patriotic Gesture Comes to Fatal End : Accident: Man dies of injuries suffered when he fell trying to put up a large flag outside his home as a show of support for GIs in Persian Gulf.

As a patriotic gesture of his support for U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf, Ronald Sylvester Kline wanted to hoist a large American flag to replace a smaller one at his mobile home in the rugged Santa Susana Mountains in Chatsworth overlooking the San Fernando Valley.

But Kline, 52, who served with the Army in Korea in the early 1960s, never got to see his new flag fly. He was killed Monday in a freak accident as he was preparing to raise it.

Kline was standing on a ladder leaning against a 25-foot-high metal pole, about to place a new brass ornament on top of it when the pole snapped in half, throwing him about 50 feet down a hillside.

Kline was rushed by helicopter to Holy Cross Medical Center’s trauma center in Mission Hills. Reenie Collins, a hospital spokeswoman, said Kline arrived in full cardiac arrest with massive head and body injuries. He was pronounced dead about an hour later after doctors could not revive him, Collins said.

Some of Kline’s friends and family members gathered Tuesday morning at his home at the Summit Mobile Home Park on Woolsey Canyon Road to finish what he had started. They said Kline wanted the flag up before the deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. His friends erected a long piece of wood as a makeshift pole near the broken metal pipe and hoisted Kline’s new flag.

As the flag flapped gently in a mild, warm breeze on a clear day, Kline’s family and friends talked about how important the Stars and Stripes were to him.

Collette Crothers, 27, the oldest of Kline’s four daughters, said her father raised them to share his patriotism.

“It’s was like he stamped little American flags on our foreheads,” she said, fighting back tears. “If he had his way he would have had his four girls enlist in the service.”

“He wanted that flag up (Tuesday),” said Pete Pistone, 50, a longtime friend who was helping Kline when the pole snapped. “He just had to have it up. Nothing else mattered. He wanted to show his support for the country.

“He went to the (American Legion post) in Woodland Hills the other day and was talking this war up. He was talking about how we were going to do this and do that over there. He was such a proud person. He was telling everybody that he was going to get his four daughters to sign up.”

In addition to Crothers, Kline is survived by daughters, Renee, 26, Kerstin, 19, and Rondalyn, 18.