Dignified disposal of unserviceable nylon flags warms the heart with patriotism and the skin with intense heat.
As veterans do twice a year, Veterans Day (11-11-11) and Flag Day June 14 — American Legion Post 365 and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2284 drove back dusk at 6 Friday with their collaborative American flag retirement ceremony in the yard beside the museum on U.S. 12 in Edwardsburg.
Next year, observances will be reversed — with Flag Day downtown and Veterans Day at the post, where spectators can shelter from wintry cold.
The ceremony stipulates assembling outdoors at night. Members align in two parallel rows about 20 feet apart, facing each other.
Each officer takes a station, as detailed on a diagram, including placement of the national colors, the post standard and the fire.
The only other acceptable disposal is burial.
Officers precede actual burning of faded Glories with a formal inspection of tattered, star-spangled banners. No one counts them, but in addition to the heaping mound dropped in mailbox-like containers at the halls, citizens add a few more.
Participating officers include Legion Commander Brad Flora, VFW Commander Bill Constant, Chaplain Steve Gard, Adjutant Sonny Long, Sons of the American Legion Commander Jim Reardon (in role of first vice commander), Second Vice Commander Dick Boepple, flag bearers Tom O’Donnell and Wolf Scout Dane Wilson, 7, Legion Auxiliary Treasurer Debi Hentz and Legion Sergeant-at-Arms Chuck Rymers, who said, “After 9/11 was the biggest bunch of flags we ever had. Pickups full. We sat here for hours.”
“These flags have become faded and worn over the graves of our departed comrades and the soldier and sailor dead of all our nation’s wars. Some of these flags have been displayed in various public places,” Rymers said.
“Since these flags have become faded and worn in a tribute of service and love,” Reardon said, “I also recommend that they be fittingly destroyed.”
“A flag may be flimsy bit of printed gauze or a beautiful banner of finest silk,” Flora said. “Its intrinsic value may be trebling or great, but its real value is beyond priceless, for it is a precious symbol of all that we and our comrades have worked for, lived for and died for — a free nation of free men and women, true to the faith of the past and devoted to the ideals and practice of justice, freedom and democracy.”