Flag Day salutes Stars and Stripes
June 14 is Flag Day, a national holiday that both celebrates and honors the history of the Stars and Stripes. The Spicewood Community Library, 1011 Spur 191, hosts a flag retirement ceremony at 6 p.m. Wednesday with Cub Scout Pack 287.
The proper retirement of an American flag has strict and ritualistic rules and procedures. A flag is carefully dissected into four pieces, leaving the blue and stars intact. The pieces are then incinerated. During the Wednesday ceremony, the Scouts will hold vigil until only ashes remain to be buried.
The Spicewood library is accepting flags from Highland Lakes residents for retirement. Most traditional ceremonies only retire one flag at a time.
Call the library at 830-693-7892 for more information.
FLAG DAY FACTS
Flag Day’s origins are in the American Revolution, when the Founding Fathers decided a flag befitting the new republic was needed.
“That the flag of the United States shall be of thirteen stripes of alternate red and white, with a union of thirteen stars of white in a blue field, representing the new constellation.”
This was the original resolution adopted by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777, during the early years of the Revolutionary War. The number of stars has grown, but the flag and what it represents has remained the same for the past 246 years.
Flag Day was first observed in the late 19th century, over a hundred years after the flag was created. Two U.S. presidents proposed designating June 14 as Flag Day, Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and Calvin Coolidge in 1927, but it didn’t become nationally recognized until 1949 when President Harry Truman signed it into law.
Raise Old Glory on June 14 and let your freedom flag fly.