Leasing patriotism
Local Boy Scouts lease flags to residents to celebrate holiday
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Boy Scout and 10-year-old Jonathan Snowden knows why residents fly their flags.
“To be patriotic and to help other people remember our nation’s freedom,” he said. “It makes me remember our nation’s freedom.”
Boy Scout Troop 363 spent Saturday morning installing 40 tubes and flags for Memorial Day. It takes about five hours of work to install the flags and retrieve them.
By this time next year, Mike Kinsey of the Victoria Sunrise Rotary hopes to have 1,000 flags flying in Victoria yards. He plans to accomplish that with a new flag lease program.
The program is a partnership between the Rotary, the Boy Scouts and the Children’s Discovery Museum.
On patriotic holiday weekends, such as Memorial Day, community members can lease an American flag to be put into their yard.
Kinsey said a PVC plastic sleeve with a cap is put into the ground and a 3-by-5-foot flag is mounted on a 10-foot metal pole.
All the work of setting up and taking down the flags is done by the organizations and all the proceeds from the lease program benefit the three organizations.
So far, about 40 flags have been leased by people in three different neighborhoods, including Colony Creek, Woodway and Country Club, Children’s Discovery Museum board member LeOlive Rogge said.
When the program was first announced last year, Donna Pridgen of Colony Creek was one of the first Victoria residents to sign up.
“So often we take freedom for granted and we don’t remember or respect what holidays like Memorial Day are all about. Hopefully seeing whole neighborhoods with flags flying will raise some awareness,” she said in a previous Advocate interview. “And I also think it’s wonderful that we have three organizations working together for our youth and for the betterment of the community.”
The cost to join the flag lease program for the remaining four upcoming holidays is $37 and flags will be put up for Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day and Veterans Day.
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To be a True Patriot:
I wish all of you could have heard and or read the whole address but here is a portion of it. I removed the two Marines names..
I have the whole address if any of you are interested. It was email distro to me so I will send it to anyone who asks for it. It was hard for me to read, tears of Pride fill my eyes.
I served our Nation in the Army Infantry. My Brother was in the Marine Corps at the same time. Infantry also. Caused my mother many sleepless nights I am sure.
I have two Sons serving in the Navy today.
I have the Honor and Privilege of working alongside the finest Americans that live, our Armed Forces. I am highly blessed.
MEMORIAL DAY 25 MAY 2008
FALLUJAH, IRAQ
JOHN F. KELLY
Major General, U.S. Marine Corps
Commanding General
I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)
We should all be confident that this experiment in democracy we call America will forever remain the land of the free and home of the brave so long as we never run out of tough young Americans willing to look beyond their own self interest and comfortable lives, and go into the darkest and most dangerous places on earth to hunt down, and kill, those who would do us harm.
May 26, 2008 at 12:31 p.m.In closing I wanted to share a story that you may not be aware of that took place only a few miles from here in Ramadi. On 22 April 2nd Battalion 8th Marines and 1st Battalion, 9th Marines were in the process of turning over a Joint Security Station Nasser. Its in the Sophia district of Ramadi, and was once the center of the insurgency in that city. Two Marines who barely knew each other as one was coming and the other going were standing guard at the Entry Control Point (ECP): their names were ***************. At 0745, and without warning, a large truck accelerated towards the ECP careening off the protective serpentine. Both must have understood on instinct what was happening as in less then a second they went to the guns and opened fire until the massive 2,000lb blast took their livesbut the suicide bomber never passed the post they protected, and 50 other Marines and perhaps as many police didnt die that day inside the JSS. I spoke to several Iraqi police eyewitness and they all told the same story, but one more emotionally than the others. He said no sane man would have stood there directly in the path of a speeding truck firing their weaponsyet two did
If 'Patriotism" is defined and measured by putting up a flag, we're in big trouble.
May 26, 2008 at 10:58 a.m.