FLAG DAY

I guess I’m old-fashioned. I love the flag. Always have and always will. It stands between tyranny and me. It allowed me to raise my children the way I want, and it allowed me to choose whom I wanted to run this great country. I didn’t always get my wish, but there is always a next time!

There’s an old joke that goes:

Two boys sat on the steps of the United Nations Building.
One boy was from the U.S.A., and one from the then U.S.S.R.
They were arguing about who had greater freedom in his country.
The American said, “I can sit on the steps of the White house and say anything I want about America, and not worry about going to jail!”
The Russian boy thought about it, and said, “I can sit on the steps of the Kremlin, and say anything I want about America, and not worry about going to jail!”

I once visited Arlington National Cemetery, and the rows and rows of hero’s humbled me. It made me feel unworthy of their sacrifice. It is indeed a holy place, the place of resting heroes. I think about how many families were effected by their lose of life, how many children never met their fathers. I think about the widows, the brave women who raised those children, who had no help, who never were bitter at the flag.

I see the flag, and I see old veteran’s standing and saluting it as it may parade by them. I think we should be saluting them as it goes by. I wonder what fears they had when someone was shooting at him or her. I wonder how many times they thought, “Today may be the last day of my life.” But they still went out and did their jobs. God bless them all!

I see the flag, and I see the millions of children who are fed worldwide, in the last hundred years! The starving nations of Europe and Asia, ravaged by a great war, twice in the 20th Century, were save by the Flag I salute.

I see they flag, and I see the couples, old and young, strolling hand in hand. They stroll in peace. They don’t worry about religious rules that govern their dress, or having to wear beards that govern their lives.

I see the flag, and I see the happy faces of little children, secure in the faith of their parents and their love of their country.

I see the flag, and I see the great triumph of NASA, the genius of our scientists and engineers, the teachers and clergy. All free and all doing their part.

Sometimes when I see the flag, I see and hear the detractors, the complainers, and the losers who blame this great flag for all the ills of the world. I wonder how they come to such conclusions.

When I went off to college, I had nothing. I had no money, no transportation of my own, and all I did have was the hope and freedom to change all that for myself. The State of New York lent me money; the part-time jobs did the rest. When the funds weren’t enough, I didn’t eat, I borrowed a book I needed, or hid on a train to get to school, where I hitched rides back and forth to classes, from the Westbury R.R. Station to Northern Boulevard. But I never felt the Flag owed it to me. It gave me what it owed me, the freedom to change my world for the better. It comes like it came for my ancestors, of whom I am very proud, it came from hard work and belief in myself.

I hear argument that America killed so many innocent Japanese at Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and I don’t hear of Pearl Harbor, or the rape of Nanking, and the Holocaust seems to slip their minds. They can’t compute the lives we saved that were American, during our time of war, when we dropped those atomic bombs, nor can they understand that their discomfort is being expressed in the comfort and friendly confines of the U.S.A.

God bless America, and God bless the flag.


Please remember all those that need our hopes and prayers, including my brother-in-law, John.