It has been there, is there today, almost everywhere you look, it seems. I notice it, of course, and think, "Okay, there it is," and move on with daily life.
There have been times when I did more than just notice and move on, like the time I went to Washington when I was 12, during my final year at Atlanta's Lena H. Cox Elementary School.
I guess every kid who went on that trip went to the Smithsonian, and there, as we entered that great place of exhibited American history, was the biggest flag I had ever laid eyes on.
I had heard of the "Star Spangled Banner," knew from the first grade when I was taught to sing the National Anthem that the song was about that big flag, and now here it was, right in front of me.
It was showing its age, was ragged along its bottom edge, and I wondered how it had survived all those years, all those decades since it flew over the garrison troops and gunners at Ft. McHenry outside Baltimore who defied the British fleet in Chesapeake Bay that fateful night during the War of 1812.
I was to learn later that it is one of history's ironies that the U.S. soldiers at the fort were commanded by a Maj. Armistead and he and his men were, in effect, the guardians of the "Star Spangled Banner." His nephew, Brig. Gen. Lewis Armistead, was mortally wounded five decades later and died under the Stars and Stripes, but not as a defender. He commanded George Pickett's Virginia Confederates who briefly broke the Union line at Cemetery Hill on the third and final day at Gettysburg, the Civil War's bloodiest battle.
On that same tour we went to see the Marine Memorial, the three-dimensional giant bronze recreation of Joe Rosenthal's Pacific Theater, World War II combat photo of the men who raised the second and larger flag on the summit of Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima. The flag the Marines raised the first time was not large enough, but the one in Rosenthal's picture was big enough for all the troops on the ground to see, as well as the soldiers and sailors who were on board ships off shore.
The sight of the flag on the enemy's mountain cheered everyone, and they needed cheering, for the flag raising marked the beginning, not the end, of the battle to take the Japanese held island. Several weeks and 5,000 Marine deaths later, they took that island where blood mixed with black volcanic sand.
A few weeks ago, at the Gainesville Memorial Day Parade, I'm not sure if the little Girl Scout who gave me a miniature American flag knew of Ft. McHenry or Gettysburg or Iwo Jima. I'm pretty sure, for her, the flag means home and love of country.
I'm pretty sure because as she and her fellow scouts passed out the flags to the spectators, she smiled and asked "Would you like one of my flags?"
"My flag." She wanted to share her flag with me. Now how could you turn down an offer like that?
Her flag, my flag, a flag many times tattered and torn, smoke- and blood-stained as it flew over many battlefields - a flag not to be taken for granted, ever.
(Jerry Gunn is a reporter for WDUN NEWS TALK 550, MAJIC 1029, SPORTS RADIO 1240 THE TICKET and AccessNorthGeorgia.com.)
http://accesswdun.com/article/2006/7/106872