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An Arkansas woman who went to pick up the class ring she ordered from Walmart left disappointed, after store officials told her the retailer's new policy barred them from turning the item over -- because it bore an image of the Confederate flag.Elaine Glidewell told KFSM someone from the store in Fort Smith called her to pick up the ring she'd ordered for her nephew, but when she arrived on Tuesday, a clerk told her she couldn’t have it. The ring had been ordered before Walmart stopped selling items bearing images of the flag, in the wake of controversy that stemmed from a racially-charged shooting in South Carolina.“I wanted to cry,” Glidewell told KFSM, adding that the store clerk said the ring would be "melted."Glidewell said she paid $320 for the ring and was going to present it to her nephew, who recently graduated. He had expressed interest in a design that bore a Rebel mascot that incorporates the Confederate battle flag. She got her money back, but no ring.“They wouldn’t let me have the ring. It had a note on it, was in a plastic bag, it said do not sell. It was signed by the store manager,” Glidewell said.Brian Nick, spokesman for Walmart, told FoxNews.com Glidewell was denied the ring because her transaction came after the retailer made a “business decision” to stop selling items with the Confederate flag on it.“The decision was made several weeks ago not to sell products promoting the confederate flag and this item fell under that category and the associate made the right choice and did not complete the sale,” Nick said.
... A Wal-Mart spokesman said Wednesday afternoon that the Decatur store did not deny the ring based on the school's Rebel mascot. In fact, he said that particular mascot's image was not available in the first place."The whole premise that we wouldn't put their mascot on the ring is inaccurate," Brian Nick, Wal-Mart's director of national media relations, told AL.com. He also said that the claim the store refused to include "West Morgan Rebels" on the ring was inaccurate."The ring requested by the customer is a design that is no longer offered at our store and was not the high school's mascot," Nick wrote in a statement emailed later. Nick told AL.com that the traditional Colonel Reb image, "a bearded gentleman with cane," used by West Morgan High School, is a "particular image we don't carry." The only Rebel mascot option offered in the third-party ring supplier's catalog was of a soldier with a gun and Confederate flag, Nick said, not of Colonel Reb."Wal-Mart's overall decision several weeks ago was that we will no longer sell merchandise promoting the Confederate flag," Nick told AL.com. "The associate was correct in stating we would not (sell the ring with an image of a Confederate flag on it)."We have made our third party supplier aware that customers might be interested in purchasing a ring with the (Colonel Reb) high school mascot and they are working on making these available to customers in the community," Nick said in an emailed statement. ...
Walmart to ‘melt’ class rings bearing Confederate flag rather than complete orders
