By Carol Fisher Linn
It’s Flag Day! It’s Father’ Day! A good weekend to celebrate both!
Fathers’ Day is aways the third Sunday in June (2025 – June 15th). Flag Day is always June 14th. This year they both occur on the same weekend.
In school I was required to read The Red Badge of Courage in which a young Civil War soldier gave in to fear and ran away from battle, only to listen to his conscience and return to the battlefield. When he returned, the company flagbearer had fallen. Courageously, he grabbed the flag and led his regiment to victory. You see, the purpose of a standard bearer was to give the unit’s members a visual signal as to where the unit was (generally near the leader). If during battle, you were separated from your unit, you looked for flag or “standard” and then tried to get back close to it. When the standard ‘fell’, the unit members did not have a visual point to rally around or return and the possibility that the leader had fallen was great. Brave soldiers competed with one another for the honor of being selected to lead an attack with the flag. Hundreds of those accepted as flag-bearers paid for the privilege with their lives.
a field of stars in the corner. I encourage you to think of the image
of the Iwo Jima Statue in Arlington Cemetery. This statue
proudly flies a cloth American flag.
It’s only a flag, you say. Just strips of cloth sewn together with a field of stars in the corner. I encourage you to think of the image of the Iwo Jima Statue in Arlington Cemetery. This statue proudly flies a cloth American flag. Thinking of that cloth flag, it occurs to me that it would be ideal if every American who displays a flag, be it on a pole, home, yard, deck or on a vehicle (yes, it is legal – if done by the rules), would bear in mind what took place for that flag to be raised on 2/23/1945 on Mount Suribachi during the battle for Iwo Jima. Incidentally, a smaller flag was initially raised but after a fierce Japanese response, the Americans did it again, with a larger flag which is the famous photograph seen the world over. They risked their lives to put that flag up, both times. With 26,000 American casualties, it was one of the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history.
Only pieces of cloth, you say. Yet Americans risked and ultimately gave their lives to protect those simple cloth symbols of America. This flag has seen us though the birth of this nation. This flag can be found at the U.S. Capitol, on every state and county building, from New York City to Monowi, Nebraska (population 1), under the heat of Phoenix to the iciness of Fairbanks. Our pioneers settling this land carried our flag, as did our astronauts to the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon. Why? It is the symbol of the indomitable spirit of Americans – the spirit of a democracy of a free and equal people. Sacrifice. Our flag flies free and strong and crisp and beautiful because of so many sacrifices.
If you fly the flag, it is your duty, no, your sacred obligation, to keep tabs of that flag. There is a flag on a tall pole on Rte. 240 which is almost torn in half save for the field of stars. Why??? Drive along the roads and you will see tattered flags at business establishments and homes alike. Then yesterday, driving through Randolph in pouring rain, I noticed a man with a long pole, face up into the rain, struggling to unfurl a flag that got twisted around one of the many that patriotically line Randolph’s main street. Please, be more like the man in Randolph; honor and take care of your flag. It would be better not to fly it all than not to fly it respectfully. Remember, our flag flies free because of the courageous spirit of those who have the led the way to this time in history. We are the land of the free – home of the brave. Can you match their braveness and spirit? Show it.
Here’s where Father’s Day comes in. You see, since our pioneer days, it is families and basic family values that have knitted this country into the tapestry it is today: love, faith/hope, courage/gutsiness, indomitableness, work, caring for others, neighborliness.
In my core family of the 40‘s and 50’s dad was the breadwinner, the home builder – right under our feet as the house grew basement up – after a full day of work at Bethlehem Steel (no car), he repaired bikes and broken hearts, sewed up wounds on our dogs, and in his way, he guided us all through the tumultuous years of adolescence through adulthood. A casualty of the horrors of Pacific WWII he became an alcoholic, yet, regardless, family and protection, and caring came first. He gave his all – for the flag, for his family and for his community.
So, on this day for fathers, we, too, say thanks to America’s dads — for the labor and legacy of our families and our freedoms. Happy Father’s Day!