Remembering the Flag

Last week my congressman emailed me a note about Flag Day..

Every year on June 14, we celebrate the birthday of the Stars and Stripes. On that date in 1777, the Second Continental Congress authorized a new flag to symbolize the new nation, the United States of America. The first national observance of Flag Day followed on June 14, 1877, the centennial of the original flag resolution.

By the mid 1890s the observance of Flag Day on June 14 was a popular event and, due to growing public support for an official national observance, in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation calling for a nationwide observance of Flag Day on June 14. It was not until 1949, however, that Congress made this day a permanent observance by resolving, “That the 14th day of June of each year is hereby designated as Flag Day…”

Our flag continues, to this day, to be a symbol of strength, hope, and a source of pride for Americans.

When I think about our flag I alway think of the US National Anthem. Here is a historical reminder from Wikipedia of the link between the flag and the song:

The lyrics come from "Defence of Fort McHenry", a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British drinking song, written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. Set to Key's poem and renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner", it would soon become a well-known American patriotic song.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" was recognized for official use by the Navy in 1889 and the President in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931.

I still wax patriotic when I hear these lyrics from the song:

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Our flag flies over soldiers, students, bureaucrats, and peoples who have come here from all nations. It has flown in war and in peace. It has flown on the moon. It represents courage, compassion and strength. Long may it wave.