Flags & Feelings, June 2020, Part 1

It’s Flag Day in the USA, and I remember watching the students at a Mexican primary school perform the weekly flag ceremony. Learning about their flag customs inspired my own recollections of my experiences with the American flag as a girl and also its connection with memories of my late husband, who died at a young age, and I want to tell you these stories in this blog post.

Flag Day started in 1885 when a small-town teacher in Wisconsin, Bernard Cigrand, thought of the idea for an annual flag day every June 14th. Thirty-one years later, in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson officially established June 14th as Flag Day.

Earlier this year, on a trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, I received an invitation to visit Leónides Cota Collins Primary School as a guest author. I saw how, at this school (and all schools in Mexico), each Monday the Mexican flag is honored. Students in special school uniforms high-step march up and present the colors, then place the Mexican flag followed by the singing of the Mexican National Anthem.

While waiting for my reading to begin, I observed the sixth-grade girls—who had achieved the honor with good grades and exemplary behavior—dressed in a special “gala uniform” with bows, beret, and gloves (this is dressier than the daily uniform) process with the Mexican flag for the morning school assembly. Deputy Academic Director, Aguilar Leticia explained, “That ceremony is called ‘honores a la bandera,’ and in Mexico all schools do it every Monday at 8 AM to promote love and identity to the homeland. A girl escort carries the flag and then we sing the national anthem.”

In Mexico, Flag Day is February 24th. Special preparations are made with the “honores a la bandera” displayed throughout the school, and again the escort girls wear their unique uniform, and all the flags from Mexico’s history are exhibited.
I recalled my elementary school years. Each morning I stood by my desk, placed my hand over my heart and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Often my class sang, “My Country ‘tis of Thee.” I attended military Department of Education schools until the seventh grade. I’m not sure if civilian schools followed the same ritual.

After leaving a Girl Scout meeting one day, so proudly dressed in my green uniform and beret, I remember walking home from the military base, Patch Barracks, to our quarters (apartment) in Stuttgart, Germany. The protocol dictated at 5 PM when the flag was lowered and “Taps” played, everyone on base—cars, people—came to a stop. That afternoon I dawdled, much to my friend’s frustration, because I wanted to be able to stand and offer the Girl Scout salute while the flag was lowered.

I also remember lonely homesick months while living abroad in my early twenties. I sometimes walked into the heart of the base for the daily flag lowering and playing of “Taps” as a way of connecting to the familiar.
Once while seated all alone, high on a hill, in anticipation of watching the July 4th fireworks display, I jumped up and placed my hand over my heart when the “Star Spangled Banner” played!

​Each Memorial Day weekend, I lay a yellow rose bouquet with a flag tucked inside at a local Veterans’ Wall in memory of my late husband, CW-4 Larry K. Jones, who died on active duty. Yellow roses, his favorite. The flag, for the country he loved and served.

This Flag Day 2020, our country is deeply divided and full of despair, fear, valid anger over racial injustice, and grief beyond measure while fighting the deadly COVID-19 Virus pandemic. Yet, just as I sought out the flag for grounding in my youth, I look to it again with full confidence that the ideals it represents will prevail and we as a nation will move closer to our pledge, “with liberty and justice for all.”