The flag is flown in the full-staff position on this day. While the law addresses flying the POW/MIA flag on federal installations only (see the link above), civilians should fly the POW/MIA flag directly beneath the U.S. flag on the same pole. State flags should not be flown on the same pole on these occasions.

I am not a member of the National League of Families, but I think those who are would remind us all that is not an occasion of mourning. This is a day to be filled with hope and determination, and to remember that there is still much work to be done. From the League of Families website:

UPDATE:  September 2, 2009

AMERICANS ACCOUNTED FOR:  There are now 1,731 US personnel listed by the Defense POW/MIA Office (DPMO) as missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.  The number of US personnel accounted for since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 is now 852.  During the League’s 40th Anniversary Annual Meeting, a League member announced that she had just received confirmation from JPAC that remains recovered earlier had been identified as those of her brother, MSGT Donald C. Grella, USA, of Nebraska, listed KIA/BNR on December 28, 1965 in South Vietnam.  Also now accounted for from that same incident are WO2 Jesse D.  Phelps of Idaho and CPL Thomas Rice, Jr. of South Carolina, both also US Army and initially listed as KIA/BNR.  Three Air Force personnel whose names were released as accounted for are Capt Robert J. Edgar of Florida, listed MIA in Laos on 2/5/68, remains repatriated 5/27/97 and identified 4/28/09; Maj Curtis D. Miller of Texas, listed MIA in Laos on 3/29/72, remains repatriated 8/2/06 and identified 2/12/08; and LtCol Russell A. Poor of Indiana, listed MIA in North Vietnam on 2/4/67, remains repatriated 6/14/07 and identified 5/26/08.  To each of these families, the League offers understanding and the hope that these concrete answers bring long-awaited peace of mind.  Of the 1,731 men still missing, 90% were lost in Vietnam or areas of Laos and Cambodia under Vietnam’s wartime control.

You can help:  National League of Families

My correspondent asked if I would share this information with The Daily Flag readers, and I am happy to do so. Entries for this contest will end on April 13.

The winner will be invited to perform the national anthem at the museum and at the Baltimore Orioles vs. Atlanta Braves game in Baltimore on Flag Day, June 14.

The links below will tell you how to enter the contest.

• Call for Entries: http://americanhistory.si.edu/news/pressrelease.cfm?key=29&newskey=968
• YouTube group: http://www.youtube.com/group/Starspangledbanner
• Contest badge: http://americanhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/submit-your-video.aspx

Long-time Daily Flag readers will know that I am a purist about our National Anthem, and if my advice is worth anything, then this is it: If you want to enter this contest, then sing the Star-Spangled Banner with all your heart, and all your soul. Tell the story like it was the first time anyone was hearing it, and take us back to that morning in Baltimore harbor.

My choice? I didn’t actually vote, because I don’t live in Oregon. But I like this one. It respects the past with a traditional, yet modern design. And it looks the same from both sides, which is important in Oregon.

Jaymes Walker , 55, Northeast Portland, a landscape designer
The process: “I purposefully kept this flag simple in order for it to represent all of Oregon.” What it means: The “O” stands for Oregon, and is doubled. The incoming stripes frame the letter and strengthen the image to show the strength and solidarity. Blue and gold, the state colors, represent the Pacific Ocean and western Oregon; and the high desert and wheat fields of eastern Oregon. Note that the colors could be reversed.

Hat Tip to Oregonian Ted Kaye, of NAVA—North American Vexillological Association.

The difference between putting a golden, succulent Butterball on the table, and putting a wild turkey on the table, is the difference between driving to the grocery store, or lying in wait, patient and ignoring all discomforts (and they are legion)—for the wily, wild turkey to stroll into your gunsight.

To cook a wild turkey, Pop skinned the whole bird and soaked it over-night in buttermilk. Then he wrapped it in bacon, with a cut up apple and onion on the inside, or a handful of chopped celery and green onions, and carefully roasted it. He was a free-style cook when it came to wild turkey, and it might vary from year to year.

He didn’t do all those fancy things that other cooks do to turkeys, except to put it on a handsome platter, with a well-sharpened knife and fork along side. And by “well-sharpened,” I mean you could do surgery with it. Hendrick men can sharpen a knife until the edge disappears into infinity.

No matter what else was on the table, we all took a serving of Pop’s turkey (you would have too). Would you like dark meat, or darker meat?  For me, it was a reminder of hard times, and good times. Hard times, you know, to find wild turkey on your plate.

Good times—dear God in Heaven! What a blessing—to have wild turkey on your plate.

Whatever is on your plate today, I hope you will Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

It was for the “Run for the Fallen,” to the Healing Field Memorial at Patriot Park in Cathedral City, California, sponsored by the Cathedral City Rotary Club and Cathedral City.

The “run” was a motorcycle parade, lead by motorcyclists bearing four American flags in honor of four local soldiers who had fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is a wealth of information about how to carry the flags in a parade, but when the flags are borne by motorcycle riders, extra care must be taken, and the members of these motorcycle riding clubs wanted to make sure they carried these flags of honor properly.

The Run for the Fallen motorcycle procession was held by a consortium of local motorcycle riding clubs, with riders on 175 motorcycles from The American Legion Riders of Palm Springs, the Desert Riders Association, and the Palm Springs Harley Owners Group.

The riding clubs carried the four U.S. flags in honor of SPC Jason Chappell, 1st Lt. Joshua M. Palmer,       PFC Ming Sun, and Corporal Jesus Gonzales, who were from the area in and around Cathedral City.

During the Healing Field Memorial, the 4,248 names of American service men and women were read. The National Anthem was sung by legendary band leader Buddy Greco and his wife, Lezlie Anders.

The Cathedral City High School Symphonic Band, and the United States Marine Corps Band from the Air Ground Combat Center in Twenty-nine Palms performed.

Guest speaker was Gunnery Sgt. Christopher W. Cox, U.S. Marine Corps.

More photographs can be seen at The Desert Riders Association website.

Last week I took a small vacation from The Daily Flag, and during that time I made major business decisions about The Daily Flag and Flags Bay.

I will continue to write for The Daily Flag, but I am reducing the number of articles to one a week, maybe two, which will include occasional book reviews, too.

More than half the people who come to TDF are looking for specific information on flag protocol and etiquette, and I need to make changes on the website so that information is easier to find.

One of the serendipitous consequences of writing at TDF is that I have developed two book ideas which I never would have known about or considered, were it not for TDF and the research required to write here.  I don’t know if these ideas are viable, but I am devoting more time to them. That means trips to distant libraries, because the information I am looking for is not found on the Internet.

I would tell you what the book ideas are, but I cannot (unless you are a book publisher reading here—then one book is an undertold story in American vexillology, and the other idea is about a flag whose mysterious origin, I believe, is deeply buried in one of the oldest and most beloved works in all of English literature. Write me at deborah@flagsbay.com).

Until next week, I remain vexillologically yours, Deborah.

The flag image shown above was adapted from a U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs 1984 Veterans Day poster. The name of the artist is not available presently, but I’m on the hunt.  Isn’t it a beautiful painting!

Flag photo by Alex Richman, of Sidewalk Photography and Alex Richman Photography.

I wrote about Boy Scout last May, having found the name and photograph while researching at the Department of Navy—Naval Historical Center, looking for old photographs that showed the Stars and Stripes.

Historical photographs are indexed in myriad ways, but not by whether the U.S. flag is included in the image (so far as I can determine).  One of my on-going projects is to find the oldest photographic image that includes the flag.

I was trying to identify the flags on Boy Scout, when I included this line: “Maybe the Boy Scouts of American should lobby the U.S. Navy for a new USS Boy Scout, in time for the BSA centennial.”

The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea, so I wrote a letter to the Honorable Donald C. Winter, Secretary of the Navy. It was short—one page—and I got right to the point and asked him to consider naming a new boat the USS Boy Scout in honor of Scouting’s centennial coming in 2010.

I won’t share the entire letter with you, but here is a bit:

The first USS Boy Scout was small, and a second Boy Scout should probably be small too, in keeping with the spirit of the first. Regardless of the size, it needs to be a very special boat. It would be greatly beloved and her crew would never lack for attention.

After a few weeks, I received a nice reply from the office of the Secretary of the Navy, written and signed by a Navy captain working in the office. The captain thanked me for writing, and went on to explain that there were more requests for “names” than there were boats waiting for names, but that Secretary Winter considers every request. And I certainly understand that.

This morning I was (once again) looking in the archives and found this great article which explains the history of the Navy’s “ship-naming” process. There are all kinds of rules and precedents, and then exceptions to the rules.

Ordinarily I would link you directly to the page, but the Naval Historical Center is content-rich and operates slowly. I am including the entire article here, and applaud the superior scholarship of the unknown authors. It is a wonderful look at one part of U.S. Navy history.

DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY — NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER

805 KIDDER BREESE SE — WASHINGTON NAVY YARD

WASHINGTON DC 20374-5060

Ship Naming in the United States Navy

Is there a special Boy Scout in your life? Looking for the gift of a lifetime? How about this beauty!

In celebration of 100 years of Boy Scouting, the Henry Repeating Arms Company has built the Henry Golden Boy “Boy Scouts of America Centennial Edition” Rifle.

This special rifle features the Scout Oath, Scout Law, scrollwork and traditional Boy Scouts of America logo embellishing the receiver, as well as a 100 Years of Scouting logo and Centennial Edition gold filled etchings in the buttstock and forearm.

No one knows how many boys first learned to shoot on the rifle range at a Boy Scout camp, but that first experience could have been with a Henry Rifle.

It was the tiny American flag that caught my eye, in a Henry Repeating Arms advertisement on the inside back cover of the October edition of Texas Co-op Power magazine (the Pedernales Electric Cooperative Edition).

As you might expect, that little flag was irresistible to me, and I had to take closer look. Let me encourage you to take a closer look too. The story of the Henry Repeating Arms Company is American history. There is a great video on the Henry company website that shows how the rifles are made, and you can ask for a free color catalog. I have one, and it is a splendid publication. www.henry-guns.com

I’ve been hinting to Husband for a new sewing machine for Christmas, but there’s no reason I can’t have  Golden Boy of my own. Right?

See updated information about changes to the Texas flag code here.

A recurring question that shows up on every web site that writes about flags, or sell flags is this:  How do you fold a Texas flag?

The Texas Flag Code is silent on this, so there’s no help to be found there. I should mention that the U.S. Flag Code does not tell how to fold the Stars and Stripes either. The origins of our much-beloved tri-cornered fold is a mystery. Last year I speculated (with little scholarship) on this topic and wrote about it here. 

Recently the question came up again to NAVA members (North American Vexillological Association), and I shared information I’d received last year about folding the Texas flag. But it was wrong, and I mean 180 degrees wrong.

I had been told that the Texas House Sergeant at Arms folded the state flag in the usual triangle shape, finishing on the white stripe, so it was an all-white bundle.  Wrong, and I had failed to do my homework.

Determined to find the correct answer and looking for a place to start, I typed “Texas flag” into the Google search engine, clicked on “images” and took off. At 435 images into 910,000 returns, I found a very important photo. Taken at the graveside service for the funeral of former Texas governor Ann Richards, it showed seven Texas Department of Public Safety troopers. They had just removed the Lone Star flag from the governor’s casket, and were folding it.

Surely I thought, the pall bearers at Gov. Richards’s funeral, would have specific instruction on how to fold the Texas flag, so I telephoned the public information office at the Texas DPS in Austin and explained what I wanted. I wanted to know how those troopers had folded the flag.

It took a few days to get the answer, and it was prefaced with, “The Texas Flag Code doesn’t say how to fold the state flag … .” But one of the honor guard/pall bearers from Gov. Richards’s funeral sent the message that they had folded the flag in the traditional triangular fold, by folding the red stripe to the inside with the white stripe on the outside, then folding toward the blue end, finishing with just a bit of the white star showing. Proof One.

Next I called the office of the Texas (capitol building) House Sergeant at Arms. An intern there told me, “The Texas flag code doesn’t say how to fold the flag, but … .” I laughed (he didn’t.)  He told me that they do indeed fold the Texas flag in the traditional triangle, ending with the blue and showing part of the star, and that they packaged the flags in triangular-shaped boxes for mailing. Proof Two.

The intern in the Sergeant at Arms office gave me the name of an aide in Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s office who, in addition to his other duties fills the role of flag advisor, so I called the aide and explained my quest. He told me, “The Texas flag code doesn’t say how to fold the flag, but … .” We both had a good laugh, and he said that he gets phone calls every day from people asking how to fold the Texas flag.

The Governor’s aide said that lacking specific legislative instructions, the Governor’s office has traditionally folded the Texas flag into the standard triangle, with the blue end showing a bit of white star. Proof Three.

There it is. The Texas flag code gives no instructions for folding the flag, but the consensus from three Texas government offices is to fold the flag as a triangle, by folding the red stripe to the inside, then folding the white stripe down to to the blue end, so it finishes with a bit of the white Lone Star showing.

This morning my husband and I folded a 3′x5′ Texas flag three ways: all white, all red, and blue with a bit of star showing. It takes a lot of practice to make a tight right triangle, regardless which color you want it to be. Regulation Texas flags are stubby at a 2:3 ratio, while regulation U.S. flags are much longer, with a 1:1.9 ratio.

Most flag companies sell flags in 3′x5′, 4′x6′, 5′x8′ and so on. These are not regulation sizes but the are now the industry standard. Folding a 3′x5′ flag into a pretty triangular shape is not easy. It’s too short, and the folds do not come out even; you have to make a short fold first, then begin the triangle. With a regulation Texas flag in that 2:3 ratio, it would be very difficult to make a tight right triangle.

Casket flags are extra long, which makes them easier to fold. And the honor guards who do it are very good, and have practiced so their action is smooth and perfect. You really can’t stop and start over at a funeral. So if you are frustrated at trying to fold the American flag or any state flag, if you are teaching Scouts, or kids at school or at home, just remember that unless you have a regulation size flag, it is more difficult to fold a shorter flag, and you have to make some adjustments at the beginning so the end comes out right.

As for folding the Texas flag, there’s no right or wrong way, but you’ll be ok if you fold it like the state offices do.

The above photograph was taken by Larry Hendrick on the beach at San Luis Pass, on the western end of Galveston Island on the Texas coast. I was holding the flag pole, but the wind was blowing so hard, it bent the flag pole.