Flag Day and National Flag Week, 2005

[marinemom]

Flag Day and National Flag Week, 2005
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America


For more than two centuries, the flag of the United States has been a symbol of hope and pride. The flag has inspired our citizens during times of conflict and comforted us during moments of sorrow and loss. On Flag Day and throughout National Flag Week, we celebrate the proud legacy of Old Glory and reflect on this enduring symbol of freedom.

On June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution stating that "the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field." As States have been added to the Union, the flag has been modified to reflect their addition to our Nation. Today, the appearance of our flag is based on President Eisenhower's Executive Order of August 21, 1959, to include a star for all 50 States together with 13 stripes representing the original 13 American colonies.

Generations of Americans in uniform have carried the Stars and Stripes into battle so that our citizens can live in freedom. Across the globe, a new generation of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen has stepped forward to serve under our flag, defending America from our enemies. We are grateful to them and their families for defending our flag and the values of our great Nation.

On this Flag Day, we recall the rich history of Old Glory, and we remember our duty to carry our heritage of freedom into the future.

To commemorate the adoption of our flag, the Congress, by joint resolution approved August 3, 1949, as amended (63 Stat. 492), designated June 14 of each year as "Flag Day" and requested that the President issue an annual proclamation calling for its observance and for the display of the flag of the United States on all Federal Government buildings. The Congress also requested, by joint resolution approved June 9, 1966, as amended (80 Stat. 194), that the President issue annually a proclamation designating the week in which June 14 occurs as "National Flag Week" and calling upon all citizens of the United States to display the flag during that week.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim June 14, 2005, as Flag Day and the week beginning June 12, 2005, as National Flag Week. I direct the appropriate officials to display the flag on all Federal Government buildings during that week, and I urge all Americans to observe Flag Day and National Flag Week by flying the Stars and Stripes from their homes and other suitable places. I also call upon the people of the United States to observe with pride and all due ceremony those days from Flag Day through Independence Day, also set aside by the Congress (89 Stat. 211), as a time to honor America, to celebrate our heritage in public gatherings and activities, and to publicly recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this tenth day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-ninth.

GEORGE W. BUSH


And the sad thing is, not any kids today even know what Flag Day is, when it is or what it stands for.

[thedrifter]

The Star Spangled Banner
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(The Defense of Fort McHenry)
September 20, 1814
By Francis Scott Key
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Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wiped out their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner forever shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Ellie

[thedrifter]

" I AM YOUR FLAG"


Traditionalists say I was born of a woman's hand -- fashioned from bits of colored cloth by a seamstress in a small house in Philadelphia, a year after the new country was born.

Historians are less certain of my origin. Yet, no one doubts my existence. I was created out of necessity to serve as the emblem of a people whose experiment in nationhood was as unique as the arrangement of my stars and stripes.

I have proved my adaptability to change. I've accommodated growth. I've stood up to time and troubles. I fluttered in the Fall air with General Washington and his loyal French allies at Yorktown. My fabric was shredded by cannonballs from British frigates in the War of 1812. I was carried in triumph by Andy Jackson at New Orleans. The British could see me clearly in the mists of "dawn's early light," waving from the standards at Fort McHenry.

I've witnessed turmoil and bitterness, even lost some of my glory in mid-century in a war between brothers, but I was restored as a nation's emblem at Appomattox.

I traveled West with the new frontier. I flew from the headlamps of the Iron Horse in Utah. I was with the prospectors at Sutter's Mill, with the cavalry against cattle rustlers, with the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill.

I crossed the Marne with the doughboys anxious to make the world safe for democracy. I was with brave GIs storming the beaches at Normandy. I was raised over a shell-pocked hilltop at Iwo Jima and I stood by the grim-faced negotiators at Panmunjom. I was on that last helicopter from Saigon and with the men and women of Operation Desert Storm.

I have been around in victory and defeat. I've seen pleasure and pain. I was raised over the rubble of the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon. I've been folded smartly by soldiers and handed to weeping widows. I've covered the coffins of those who've served country and community.

I also decorate bandstands and concert halls. I am saluted in parades, in schools and at ball parks.

I am part of political campaigns, high holidays and ice cream socials. I fly from skyscrapers and bungalows. I've been to the moon and the ocean floor.

I am everywhere my people are. I am saluted and, occasionally, scorned. I have been held with pride and I have been ridiculed, because I am everything my people are: proud, angry, happy, sad, vengeful, argumentative, ambitious, indifferent.

I was created to serve a people in struggle and a government in change. There are now more stars in my blue field than there were in the beginning and, if need be, there's room for more.

But, those red and white stripes remain as they've always remained: clearly visible through the struggle -- the symbol of the "land of the free and the home of the brave."

I am your past. I am your future. I am your flag.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

It's Flag Day, a fitting time to recall the actions of a former Cub

By LARRY HENRY Sports Columnist

On this day we pay special tribute to the U.S. flag, Rick Monday will dig into his mail from the last week and probably find a letter praising him for his own selfless act to save Old Glory.

People don't forget, even 22 years after the fact.

"You know what's crazy is I get letters on it weekly," Monday was saying last Sunday. "What's surprising is a great majority of them are from young people, some of whom weren't even alive at the time, which is scary."

Not scary, Rick. Noble.

Just as what you did on that day was noble.

"You figure, well, it's something that happened a long time ago," he said. "Quite frankly, I was embarrassed by the attention I got doing something that anybody in their right mind would have done."

On this day, Monday was sitting in the visitors' broadcasting booth in the Kingdome, preparing for his Dodgers pre-game sports radio show. Retired as a player in 1984, he's in his fifth year as a Dodger broadcaster.

Though Monday had a solid 19-year playing career, he is best remembered not for a hit or a catch but for a grab -- of the American Flag that was about to be torched by a couple of protestors.

The day was April 25, 1976. The Cubs were playing the Dodgers in Los Angeles. Patrolling center field for the Cubs was 30-year-old Rick Monday, who was embarked upon what would be the best season of his career, with 32 home runs and 77 runs batted in. Eleven years earlier, he had been the first player taken in Major League Baseball's first free agent amateur draft. His most memorable years were yet to come. Traded to Los Angeles in January of '77, he would play in three World Series for the Dodgers and help win a World Championship in 1981.

On this spring day in '76, he was on a Cubs team that was headed for a fourth-place finish in the National League East. It was the fourth inning with the Dodgers batting. The Vietnam War had ended a year before, but people didn't need a war in order to protest. What these two ding-a-lings who had just dashed onto the field of Dodger Stadium were all about nobody knew, but here they were, and where was security? They had come from the left-field corner and had run past Cubs left fielder Jose Cardenal. One carried something under his arm but Monday couldn't distinguish what it was.

Once they reached shallow left-center, they stopped and brought out the object. Monday could see now what it was: the U.S. flag. He recalled that they laid it on the ground almost as if they were about to have a picnic. Then one of them dug into his pocket and brought out something shiny and metallic. "I figured having gone to college two and two is sometimes four," Monday said. "They were dousing it with lighter fluid."

Then they lit a match. Which flared momentarily and died.

By now, Monday was in full stride, running towards them. "To this day, I don't know what I was thinking," he said. "Except bowl them over." He was also thinking they were trying to commit a terrible act. "What they were doing was extremely wrong as far as I was concerned," said Monday, who served six years in the Marine Reserves.

He reached them about the time they got the second match lit and were about to torch the flag. "There's a picture that I think won a Pulitzer Prize and it showed me reaching down and grabbing the flag," he said.

He was not alone in trying to protect it. Tommy Lasorda, the Dodgers third base coach at the time, ran onto the field and, as Monday laughingly recalled, was "yelling every expletive in the world." This was the same Lasorda who had tried to sign Monday to a Dodgers contract while he was still in high school in the pre-draft days.

Monday got the flag and handed it to Doug Rau, a Dodgers pitcher. That was the last Monday saw of it until a month later. The Dodgers came to Wrigley Field and Al Campanis, a Dodgers executive, presented the flag to Monday. "It's displayed very proudly in my home," he said.

Monday got a hero's welcome wherever the Cubs played the rest of that season. It was the last thing he wanted. He had simply done what he thought was the right and honorable thing to do. He had visited a veterans' hospital when he played for Oakland and had seen how people's lives had been shattered fighting for what that flag represents. "It's the way I was brought up," he said. "You would have done the same thing had you been as close geographically as I was, to get the idiots stopped."

Monday told a cute story about Cardenal. In every city the Cubs visited from then on, Monday was cited for his actions, and Cardenal would jokingly say, "Oh, jeez, you're gonna get another presentation." There came a day in some ballpark when the Cubs were coming off the field and atop their dugout were two guys waving a flag -- of the Confederacy. Cardenal quickly cut in front of Monday and said, "No, no, no. I'm gonna get this one." Monday had to give the Cuban-born Cardenal a quick summary of American history to prevent a possible incident.

As for his own flag-saving actions, Monday recognized that were he to do the same thing today, he might be arrested for violating someone else's rights. "But to hell with them," he said. "They can come and lock me up right now because if they did it again, I'd do the same thing."

A glorious tribute to Old Glory.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Face the Flag

THERE is a fad that springs up now and then in America of considering it fashionable to deplore our flag as just a symbol. Well, that's absolutely right. It is a symbol. The only fault that I can find with the pseudointellectuals who therefore discount it is that they live by symbols and apparently aren't even aware of it.


I would like to ask them a few questions. For example, why do they stop their cars when they see a red light at an intersection? It's just a symbol. The answer is obvious. The least unpleasant thing that could result from doing otherwise would be for a patrolman to give them a ticket. The God awful end result could be a screeching, tearing, rendering crash that might end with life ebbing cruelly from broken bodies. It's just a symbol, that red light, but it's wiser to pay attention to that symbol, now isn't it?


A driver going down a steep mountain road might look up to see a sign posted with lines on it depicting a dangerous curve ahead. Does that driver slow to take that curve? You bet he does. He pays attention to that symbol because it could mean life or death to him if he doesn't.


To go a step further, let's concentrate on a single dot called a period. It's always important but it can become explosive. If you should promise to pay a man $500 a week on a written contract and your secretary puts the dot in the wrong place, it could be disastrous for either party providing that they signed on the dotted line.


Think then of the symbol we call "Old Glory." It came into being by an enactment of the fifteenth Congress in 1818. Rather than go into the purely physical aspects of our flag, I will try to point out what each segment of it means in heraldry and apply it to real life situations.


Red is generally accepted to denote hardiness and valor. Washington's troops at Valley Forge surely lived up to that description just as surely as did Jedadiah Smith and Joseph Walker when they penetrated the vast mountain ranges of the West and so did the people who followed. Acts of great courage are heavily pronounced in the annals of America and they most certainly didn't always take place on the field of battle. Yet, because of the fact that World War II, the Korean War and the war in Vietnam are fresh in the minds of America, there is scarcely an American who somehow, somewhere, is not acquainted with a person who once again had proved American mettle under great stress.


Remember the symbol. The red stripes on our flag represent all of America. They represent us from the dreadful winter at Valley Forge to the present and into the future. America, that is all of us, experts courage and valor from one another. It is a proud symbol and one that future generations will revere.


The white stripes in actuality represent purity and innocence. Surely the symbolism of this isn't lost on us. Despite the very real problems created by our human natures, our massive goal has always been the pursuit of justice, equality and personal happiness. To this end the often ponderous wheels of American jurisprudence seek our every avenue of truth and the American people have often asked openly if the expenditures of millions of dollars to prosecute a test case is worth the money. Emphatically yes. The search is for all of us and since those white stripes are gazed upon by millions of Americans every day, let them remember that they symbolize our constant trust to guard truth and justice vigilantly. Truth and justice that seek to be a shield for every American to carry into his daily life. A symbol? Yes, but a powerful, moving force in the constant drive toward a better world.


In the upper left-hand corner, there is a block of blue emblazoned with fifty white stars. Technically it is called the Union; it symbolized the union of two or more peoples, incorporating their ideas and districts. Let's look at it from its real standpoint and realize that each one of those stars represents millions of Americans and that somewhere in those millions is the name you answer to.


No need to pick out a single star and say, "Hey, that's for me." Those stars represent all fifty states collectively and our founders did this with a stroke of genius. For our Union does unite two or more peoples or districts. It unites fifty districts and over two hundred million people. When you stand up and salute our flag or fly it from your home, your boat or your place of business, you are saying, "I'm grateful to be a member of that biggest Union of all, the United States of America." The color blue represents vigilance and perseverance and most certainly since revolutionary days we have epitomized those words.


So in bundling it all together we have a symbol, a symbol that for two hundred years has signified honor, valor, justice, responsibility, perseverance, hardiness and commonweal. That symbol has been the banner that millions of Americans have marched and sailed and flown with int the maws of death. They have been proud of that symbol and in turn it has slowly and patiently nurtured their common good to the extent that America stands head and shoulders over most of the world.


Yes, face the flag. It is most emphatically your flag. It has been at Iwo-jima, at the Maine, it has flown against the enemy in the Coral Sea and soared high in the sky above Nazi guns. Yet, it flies peacefully above every court house in the nation and stands quietly at Arlington. It is your flag, the symbol of unity, strength and honor toward you and toward your fellow Americans. Yes, face the flag, and to thank God it's still there.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Iraqi Freedom Veteran Reflects on Meaning of Flag Day
By Capt. Steve Alvarez, USA
American Forces Press Service


WASHINGTON, June 14, 2005 – It's been a little more than two months since I returned from Iraq.
More than a year earlier I promised my wife I'd come home safely, and the day I returned, hours after I had come home, I watched my wife eagerly remove the Blue Star Service Banner that hung in our front window, and she happily watched me bring down the yellow ribbon that had hugged our yard's corner tree for a year.

The symbols of my family's hardship and sacrifice were now finally gone from the landscape of my neighborhood. Passersby and neighbors, noting the missing banner and yellow ribbon, stopped by and welcomed me home. My family's soldier was home, and the tattered, frayed ribbon that weathered three Florida hurricanes, and the banner that faded in the setting sun each day were now stowed for posterity.

Before I left Iraq, I, too, removed an item from display. It hung in the public affairs "hooch" at Phoenix Base in Baghdad, and also briefly in my quarters. The item had made the long journey from the United States to Iraq. Now back home, it sits far from the angry sounds of mortar, rocket and small-arms fire so familiar to soldiers in Iraq -- now also familiar to this flag. It is a U.S. flag flown over the U.S. Capitol on the day I became an Army officer.

Before my duty in Iraq, the flag served as a moral compass that guided me and kept my course true after I decided to leave the enlisted ranks and set my course on an officer's career path. It kept me focused and committed to the oath I took when I became a second lieutenant. I kept it within eyeshot in my office. Looking at it as I weighed options more than once helped me make sound military, personal and ethical decisions.

In Iraq, the flag was still a source of direction. The enemy routinely attacked us using indirect fire. On one occasion a round hit our compound, but did not explode. But another hit so close that the wall-draped flag waved slightly from the blast that violently shook the walls.

I looked around the hooch as we hugged the floor, and for some strange reason I felt reassured, safe. "It's going to be fine," I told my soldiers. I stared at the colors as the mortars continued to hit, and found an immense source of strength. I was never able to explain it, but every time we were attacked, if I was in the hooch, I always looked to that flag for a sense of peace, for stability, to keep me focused and grounded.

When I was in Fallujah, Iraqi security forces raised their nation's flag in a scene reminiscent of U.S. Marines raising the flag at Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, Japan, in World War II. Having seized Fallujah's hospital, one of the major objectives in Operation Al Fajr (Arabic for "dawn"), Iraqi special forces lifted their nation's colors, and in doing so lifted their comrades' spirits. And while the raising of the Iraqi flag inside of Fallujah's city limits was not as dramatic as the Marines raising the U.S. flag in the Pacific, to me, an officer sent to Iraq to help support the training of Iraqi security forces, it was equally inspiring.

As I served in Iraq, I wore the U.S. flag on my uniform. The flag accompanied me as I traveled the sometimes-dangerous streets of Iraq and flew with me in Iraq's not-so-friendly skies. My U.S. flag patches are the only patches from my uniform that I have kept.

Now, symbols of my war service, like my flag patches, are securely tucked away in a keepsake box, and my commissioning flag sits on a shelf in our den encased in wood and glass. Someday I'm sure they will again serve as a source of inspiration.

But today is Flag Day. And for my family, our house is not our home without the flag waving gently, quietly, proudly in the breeze on our front porch. For us, our flag symbolizes that we are free to do what we want, when we want. It represents freedom of spirit, who we are, what we stand for, and what we're willing to endure for liberty.

That's what kept me focused in Iraq and kept me believing in our mission. To me, the flag represents my family, our way of life -- many, united as one. And maybe that's what Flag Day is all about. The flag is something different to everyone, and in that disparity there is unity, a bond.

I've returned to my life as a part-time soldier, and I am in Washington performing my annual training. It comes as no surprise that on my son's first visit to Washington, the first two places we visited were the Marine Corps War Memorial and the National Museum of American History.

The Marine Corps War Memorial, which depicts that famous World War II flag raising, now reminds me of the nascent Iraqi forces raising their country's colors in Fallujah. The symbolism behind the monument has become, for me, one and the same with the symbolism of that moment in Fallujah.

And draped at the entrance of the National Museum of American History is a symbol of sorrow, resolve, determination and inspiration -- the mammoth flag that covered the span across the Pentagon's damaged walls the morning after Sept. 11, 2001.

And as expected, the encased flag in my den and the flag patches I wore on my uniform are once again serving as a source of inspiration.

You are, after all, reading this article.


Ellie