After I mounted an American flag on our front porch several years ago to mark the Fourth of July, the Stars and Stripes looked so grand that my family and I decided to keep them up for good. Seeing Old Glory as we come and go each day has been a blessing, though full-time service is hard on a flag.
Within a year, the stripes and stars had faded, their colors dimmed by the bright sun and damp air of my ¶¶Ňőh neighborhood. We’ve worn out two flags since our household tradition began, replacing them each time with bright new versions from the corner hardware store.
I carefully folded the old flags and tucked them into a dining room drawer, not quite sure how I’d bid them goodbye.
We’re approaching another Fourth of July, a special occasion to celebrate the United States flag and revisit the rituals for respecting the red, white and blue. There are some customary rules for honoring the flag, and one of them is that old flags shouldn’t simply be thrown away.
One preferred method is burying worn flags, but at the rate our family wears them out, I couldn’t see turning our lawn into a graveyard. Another popular alternative is ceremonial burning, in which old flags are reverently retired in a small gathering. Starting a fire seemed impractical in my yard, and I wondered if folks next door might get the wrong idea if they peeked over the fence and spotted a solitary man setting the star-spangled banner alight.
I tabled the matter by stowing our old flags out of sight.
Some of my neighbors apparently faced the same quandary. Or so I discovered when Jacob Smith, a local Boy Scout, issued a call for old American flags so that he and fellow members of Troop 136, chartered through St. George Catholic Church, could include them in a flag retirement ceremony. He collected several bags of faded flags, including two of mine.
I was out of town during the ceremony that Smith helped organize, but I reached him later to ask him about his project.
“The reason I held this ceremony was because the flag is a powerful symbol of our country and the values it stands for, so when it’s no longer in good condition, it deserves to be retired with honor instead of just thrown away,” Smith told me. “This ceremony shows respect for what the flag represents and for those who served under it.”
In pictures of the ceremony on social media, about half a dozen Scouts are solemnly gathered around a small fire in an iron pit, slowly commending each flag to the flames.
Seeing the pictures, I was moved to think that true patriotism, so often embraced as loud, bold and even boisterous, can sometimes be a quiet and tender thing, too. Those are the virtues that will endure, one hopes, long after any flag turns to ashes.
Email Danny Heitman at danny@dannyheitman.com.
