Flag Day?

This morning I, along with nine other members of American Legion Post 241, rendered honors to a deceased veteran, a long time member of our Post, and one of the few remaining men in this area who served in World War II.

We rendered these honors by reading a short message about his service to his country. Then two of us folded the United States Flag that had been stretched over his casket, and it was presented to his next of kin. We fired a three volley rifle salute, followed by “Taps”, the music that for over a hundred years has signified the end of the day for the soldier and the end of his life here on earth.

As we had waited for the funeral cortege to arrive, I noticed a scattering of small flags on some of the gravesites. Placed there for a special occasion, perhaps for Memorial Day, they were tattered, dirty and torn. I straightened one up so that it would not touch the ground.

I stood there, and thought about our Flag.

Last week the mayor of a nearby town had received a U. S. Flag that had been flown over the United States Capitol. It came from a Congressman’s office. The mayor seemed pleased at the gift. The picture sent me to do research.

The program began in 1937, when a Member of Congress received a request from someone “back home” for a Flag that had flown over the Capitol building. The Architect of the Capitol accommodated him, and the program has grown from that point.

Soon one flagpole did not suffice, so more were installed, and a detail was assigned to fly Flags, however briefly, over the Capitol.

Over a hundred thousand Flags are hoisted annually to the peak of a short staff, lowered and packaged, along with a “Certificate of Authenticity”, and shipped to someone. All requests go through a Congressman’s or Senator’s office. Prices run from $13.25 to $22.55, plus shipping and packing. I could not find how many people are required to furnish this “service”, nor how much it actually costs the taxpayer. I do know that, on occasion, a Member presents one, free of charge, to someone. Perhaps the one to the Mayor came under that classification.

I do not have such a Flag. I have not requested one, and do not plan to do so.

I do have the Flag that draped my father’s coffin that day in March when he was laid to rest. He was a soldier with General John J. Pershing’s American Expeditionary Forces in France in the Great War.

I have a Flag that once flew over the USS SAUFLEY, a destroyer that saw service in World War II in the Pacific war against the Japanese. The Flag was used years later, when I was a young officer in her during the uneasy days of the “Cold War”. It was to be destroyed because it was frayed, so I brought it home and had it repaired.

I have assisted in presenting many Flags as we mourned with survivors of honored dead.

Since that day in September when terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania, we have seemingly become obsessed with the Flag.

We fly it from houses, and from stores, and along streets and high above businesses and sometimes even from the antennas of new cars on display.

We fly it as decorations. It is not uncommon for a speaker to stride onto a stage that has ten or twelve or twenty U. S. Flags in a row serving as a backdrop or for some well meaning organization to use them as centerpieces at their annual banquet.

In the days of protest during the 1960s we as a people condemned those that made garments from our Flag or otherwise desecrated them.

Today we buy shirts and shawls and hats with the same design emblazoned on them.

Once flags were flown reverently on the Fourth of July and on Memorial Day and on Veterans’ Day.

Today we fly them from our homes and along our streets on President’s Day and Flag Day and on any other day when we feel patriotic.

Today we American Legion members presented a folded United States Flag, with its thirteen beautiful stripes and its field of blue and its fifty white stars, to a weeping widow.

Today a man or woman will receive from his Member of Congress a folded United States Flag, with its thirteen beautiful stripes and its field of blue and its fifty white stars and a Certificate of Authenticity.

Today………which would you say honors our nation?