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Flag Day is an
often overlooked holiday tucked in
the holiday-packed month of June. Let us remember to give our flag the
greatest honor, because: “I am whatever you make me, nothing more. I
swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol of yourself,
the pictured suggestion of that big thing which makes this nation.” (Franklin Knight Lane)
An Appeal For Flag Day Recognition
by Gerald D. Swick
June 14 is Flag Day, one of our less-celebrated annual
events. The paparazzi swarm the Fourth of July with its fireworks and
parades, but generally overlook this quiet little observance tucked into
the middle of June.
That doesn’t reflect a blasé attitude of our times. It
seems the day has always struggled for recognition. A writer in Wheeling’s
The Intelligencer bemoaned a lack of enthusiasm for Flag Day in
1921, just three years after World War I and America’s great patriotic efforts
associated with that conflict. Here are his words, with a few breaks
inserted into what were very long paragraphs:
“Today is Flag Day in
West Virginia, as well as in other parts of this
great country,” The Intelligencer
said, “and it is a pity that there will not be a wider observance of the
date. The Elks lodges at some points in
West Virginia are planning to observe the day,
but there will be many points where Flag Day of 1921 will pass like Flag
Days of the past with only a few flags displayed . . .
“What the flag symbolizes is worthy of the greatest
honor and it is to be regretted that the custom of uncovering when it
passes in parade is not more generally observed in this state. Only a
small portion of the men watched at parades in
Charleston,
Clarksburg and Fairmont in the last years
have lifted their hats when the flag was carried past. This in the vast
majority of cases was not intentional disrespect, but evidence of the
forgetfulness that comes to many people in the days of peace.
“The salute to the flag is a salute to all the American
citizen holds dear and it is a salute to those millions who have died in
wars to make this nation free, united and strong. It is a salute to
our-selves as citizens, the unforced tribute of freemen to the beautiful
symbol of our country. No American flag in parade should fail to receive
the civilian’s salute and the forgetful should be reminded by
bystanders.
“If you do nothing more in the way of observing Flag
Day, determine to salute the flag the next time it passes you in a
parade.”
Even Flag Day’s beginnings were modest. It probably
started in 1885, according to
www.usflag.org, when B.J. Cigrand, a school teacher in Fredonia,
Wisc., had his students observe what he called Flag Birthday.
He chose June 14 because on that day in 1777 the
Continental Congress officially adopted a banner with 13 stars in a blue
field and 13 alternating red and white stripes. He continued to promote
June 14 as Flag Birthday or Flag Day. Along with Leroy Van Horn, he
founded the American Flag Day Association and moved the celebrations
beyond Fredonia. The first time Chicago participated, some
300,000 people turned out.
The idea was slowly picking up steam in other parts of
the country. In 1889, George Balch, a
New York kindergarten teacher arranged
ceremonies at his school. New
York State Board of
Education adopted June 14 as Flag Day, and in 1894 the state’s governor
directed all public buildings to display the flag on that day. And so it
went, spreading across the country in a grassroots movement that
literally “ran it up the flagpole” to see who would salute.
President Woodrow Wilson established the first official
national Flag Day with a 1916 proclamation, but it still wasn’t an
annual observance. Finally, on
Aug. 3, 1949, President Harry S. Truman signed an Act of
Congress that designated June 14 as National Flag Day.
Let me leave you with these words by Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane
from a 1914 Flag Day ceremony. Voicing what he claimed the flag
whispered to him that morning, he said, “I am whatever you make me,
nothing more. I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a
symbol of yourself, the pictured suggestion of that big thing which
makes this nation.”
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