Yesterday was special because it was the birthday of my dear daughter-in-law, Dawn. Today is special for two birthdays: the United States Army and the American Flag. Americans have a double reason to celebrate. From the days of our earliest beginnings, America has had a group of courageous men and women willing to stand between their homes and tyranny. How many lives have been given to defend the thing that makes our country great – freedom? The history of the American army is an absorbing, heart-stirring study.
And then there’s our flag, the Red, White, and Blue; Old Glory; The Stars and Stripes; The Star Spangled Banner. Starting with only thirteen stars, our flag has grown to include fifty, with the latest additions of Hawaii and Alaska. I grew up under the flag of forty-eight stars. Does anybody remember the Sinatra song, “Let’s Get Away From It All”? It includes these words, “We’ll visit every state. And I’ll repeat, ‘I love you, Sweet’, in all the forty-eight.”
Our Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, all our defenders of this great land that I love and they all fly the American Flag. Our flag of thirteen stripes and fifty stars is a symbol of the greatest country, a country blessed by God, the United States of America. It is more than just a banner. It is more than just a flag. It represents hard-working patriotic people who “more than self, their country loved, and mercy, more than life” (from America, the Beautiful, by Samuel A. Ward and Katherine Lee Bates.)
In recent years, ideas concerning the flag seem to have faltered. Men have risked their lives to keep it from touching the ground. Once was, the flag was to be taken indoors every night; the sun was not supposed to go down on it. Now, I understand it’s okay to keep it flying at night if a flood light is trained on it. At one time, it wasn’t supposed to be left out in the rain. And there’s a specific, correct way to fold it.
I remember the flag that covered the coffin of my nephew, Clint. At the end of his service, it was folded and handed to his mother. It was the symbol of the country he loved.
My mother wrote an editorial to our local paper, years ago, about some misguided Americans who were burning the flag or stomping on it. It was a ringing support of our national symbol and expressed her feelings of those who desecrated it.
In the words of Francis Scott Key, writer of The Star Spangled Banner, “Oh, long may it wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”
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