American flag represents nation at greatest, most vulnerable moments | The Herald

Today is Flag Day, one of 20 days Congress says the American flag should be flown.

The celebration traces its birth to the Second Continental Congress, which, on June 14, 1777, passed a resolution that the flag of these United States "be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white" and "the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."

Various states celebrated a Flag Day, but it wasn't until 1916 that President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed a national Flag Day. And it wasn't until 1949 that President Harry Truman set aside June 14 as the Flag Day.

For many, this is a day for the perfect image of the flag, one gently rippling in the breeze with broad stripes and bright stars. It is the flag once made by the thousands at the former Rock Hill Printing & Finishing Co. and after Sept. 11, 2001, at Tico Industries in Lancaster.

It is an image of majesty, an image of a grand old flag.

But the imperfect images, what country singer Johnny Cash called the ragged banner, are why we celebrate Flag Day.

These imperfect images are often captured during times of conflict, showing America at its best and its worst.

Joe Rosenthal captured one of the flag's signature moments when he photographed five Marines and Navy corpsman struggling to raise the flag Feb. 23, 1945, on Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima. His iconic image won the Pulitzer Prize for photography that year. The Pulitzer jury called the photograph a "frozen flash of history."

Stanley Foreman won the 1977 Pulitzer for photography for a far different flag photo. He captured an anti-busing protestor in Boston appearing to use an American flag on a pole as a spear against an unarmed black man. The image shattered the illusion that racial segregation and hatred were strictly a Southern phenomenon.

Thomas Franklin won the 2002 Pulitzer for photography of his simple photo of three firemen struggling to raise an American flag in the rubble of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Amid the chaos, firefighters William Eisengrein, George Johnson and Daniel McWilliams decided to raise the flag as a statement of loyalty and resilience.

"This was an important shot. It told more than just death and destruction. It said something to me about the strength of the American people and of these firemen having to battle the unimaginable," Franklin said of his photo.

And before there were photos, a poet captured the image of the flag and the uncertain future of a fledgling nation, watching for it through the night and into the morning.

We sing of bombs bursting in air and rocket's red glare, but Francis Scott Key also wrote:

"Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,

In fully glory reflected now shines in the stream,

Tis the star-spangled banner - O long may it wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!"

Key's poem captured the flag in a way, historians say, that transformed it from an emblem into something familiar and evocative. The flag came to represent a country's values and what it stands for and what people are willing to do to protect it.

In 1942, Congress finally put that feeling into law, passing the Flag Code. According to the code, "the flag represents a living country and is itself, a living thing."

Long may she wave.

American Flag etiquette:

-Flag must be lighted at all times by sunlight or appropriate source.

-Must never be “dipped” or nodded to any person or thing.

-Flown upside down only as signal of distress.

-Must not be used for decoration in general.

-Never used in advertising purposes.

-Never used as part of a costume or athletic uniform, except as inclusion asflag patch.

-When lowered, no part must touch the ground or other object; must bereceived directly into waiting hands or arms.

-When weathered, aged or worn out to a point it no longer fitting to fly,flag should be destroyed by burning in a dignified manner.

Source: USA Flag