I’ve said it before in this column and I’ll say it again: I love the flag. it’s my flag, our flag, the flag of the United States of America. As a nation, we celebrate it together on June 14, Flag Day. It’s an honor perfectly sandwiched between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.
I have a personal and professional relationship with Old Glory.
As a 1950s preschooler, I was a loyal member of WBZ-TV’s Small Fry Club. Each afternoon, I stood at attention in front of the family’s large black and white television as, from the station’s Soldiers Field Road studio in Brighton, host Big Brother Bob Emery raised a glass of milk to toast the president of the United States.
Once old enough for kindergarten, each school morning began with a proper salute to the flag.
As a Cub Scout, I learned to fold the flag properly into a neat triangle with the stars showing.
As a US National Park Service ranger, I hoisted the red-white-and-blue briskly over our federal facility each morning and struck the colors ceremoniously at day’s end. I wore a flag patch on my uniform.
There’s a little flag sticker on the back of my Jeep.
An 8- by 10-inch historic flag print hangs over my desk, just above the shadow box displaying the flag of my late veteran father-in-law.
A small painted replica on a slate shingle hangs by the side entrance to my barn.
We fly the flag at our Greek Revival home. As the late “60 Minutes” commentator Andy Rooney once said of such houses, “They were made for a flag.”
I possessed the 48-star military burial flag that once draped the coffin of my World War I veteran grandfather. And I held my veteran father’s flag after it ceremoniously covered his casket before being honorably presented to my grieving mother. Both American-made cloth banners of the republic seemed brittle, yet strong, unfaded and sacred.
Legend has it that George Washington asked Betsy Ross to sew the first flag. True or not, it has evolved over the years to become today’s rows of 50 white stars on a field of blue representing each of the union’s states, while the 13 red and white stripes signify the original colonies.
The flag represents different things to different people. To some it defines honor and pride, freedom, and security. To others it evinces feelings of tyranny, hatred, and revulsion. And to some it evokes just plain indifference. Irrespective of one’s thoughts, opinions or beliefs, the flag stands for a nation that protects and defends them all.
When the flag was first glimpsed by some of our immigrant forebears as they approached the shores of America, it promised a land of freedom, safety, and opportunity. Today it does the same for political refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, and beyond.
I remember it was an American sin to desecrate the flag, employ it for commercial purposes, clothes, or otherwise play with its colors or layout. Today, it seems anyone can use it without recourse for whatever commercial or political purpose they deem appropriate.
File under: “I hate what you say but I will defend to death your right to say it.” In 1989 the US Supreme Court ruled that burning the flag is a form of symbolic speech protected by the First Amendment.
Flag etiquette seems to have vanished. But not so much in Gloucester.
On May 23 just before dawn, as they have for the past 22 years, Ringo Tarr and his band of merry volunteers placed 160 flags along Stacy Boulevard. The flags will proudly be displayed there through Labor Day.
These emblems are in addition to the American standard that constantly flies above Gloucester’s grand promenade on the harbor.
For Memorial Day, and just across the street at Kent Circle’s McKinnon Triangle, 185 flags representing the Gloucester servicemen who paid the ultimate sacrifice from World War I to the present were set in soil.
At the same site, there are dual flags flying permanently at the World War II commemorative poles. Thank you to the late World War II local hero Mike Linquata for making that happen.
Within eye distance ,and displaying the flag at Stage Fort Par, is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Ruth Pino, her sister-in-law Joanne Pino Curcuru, and several vets were the force behind this.
And just as six brave young Marines raised the stars and stripes over the sands of Iwo Jima during the final days of World War II, so too do the residents of Gloucester proudly raise their own stars and stripes over the neighborhoods of America’s first seaport.
Jack Clarke is a Gloucester resident and frequent contributor to the Gloucester Daily Times.