Just as member Vickie Trickett was going into the history of how Betsy Ross was enlisted to stitch the American flag, the hailstones began pelting the roof of Elks Lodge 411 like bombs bursting in air.
Monday was Flag Day, a national holiday, which for 72 years has honored the red, white and blue weave of the American flag as it continues to wave over the Republic.
President Harry Truman signed the day into law in 1949 while the country was still staggering somewhat in the aftermath of World War II.
From its perch on Chestnut Ridge Road, Elks Lodge 411 honored the flag on its day, as its national organization has done since 1908.
In keeping with local tradition at the lodge, members of Morgantown’s Chapter 306 of the Vietnam Veterans of America helped with the program – which was rain-shortened, as another spate of bad weather blew in.
If Mother Nature hadn’t intervened, everyone would have gathered in the parking lot for what would have been a visually striking component of the ceremony.
Hundreds of old, tattered flags would have been ritually burned, which, according to military protocol, is the only respectful, proper way to retire the national symbol.
Organizers said that segment of the reverence will have to take place at a later date.
The program, meanwhile, featured a parade of flags from American history.
There was the yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” Gasden flag with its rattlesnake depiction.
There was the Ross offering, with its circle of 13 stars against a blue background – representing the original New World colonies – augmented with another 13 red and white stripes.
There was the present-day flag, with its 50 stars.
A lot of the men in the room, the Vietnam veterans, especially, had the latter-day seared into their consciousness and their own psychic photo albums.
In 1945, right before most of them would come into being via America’s post-war Baby Boom, Joe Rosenthal, a photographer and the son of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, snapped an iconic image of battle-weary Marines raising the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima in the waning days of World War II.
Twenty-four years later, in 1969, America was mired in Vietnam, and Peter Fonda wore Old Glory upside-down on the back of his leather jacket in “Easy Rider” – a landmark movie that year about the disaffected sons and daughters of the Greatest Generation.
On Sept. 11, 2001, firefighters at Ground Zero echoed Rosenthal’s shot without realizing as they raised a flag in the rubble of the World Trade Center, which, sadly, would be the opening act of a new war that would result in more sons and daughters, more blood in the call to service.
Charles Harrington didn’t want to talk politics or tell war stories on the rainy evening at the Elks.
He just knows he draws comfort any time he sees the broad stripes and bright stars unfurling in the breeze.
Harrington came home from the fighting in Vietnam in 1968.
“The American flag is everything,” the old veteran said.
“It’s everything to us.”
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