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For those who may not know, the Boy Scouts will retire a flag. We have had several retirement ceremonies, and if you were not a patriot before it began, you will be reduced to tears of patriotism when it's over.
The flag is reduced to it's individual parts, stars, stripes, and border. Each state is named as the stars are retired, and each color is listed as to it's meaning.
We have had parents have to be comforted when the ceremony is over, some had never understood, the significance of what the flag means.

If anyone has a flag that has become to tattered to fly, seek out your local Boy Scouts troop and donate it. If you get the opportunity, go to a flag retirement ceremony, it will bring you a whole new respect for the symbol of our country.

RicoTX wrote:Dont mean to hijack, but Im curious... when I was a kid we removed our hats during the national anthem but did not put our hand over our heart. I have since learned the etiquette was changed before then to suggest that motion, but we never did that in my area. Now some people are calling others out because they don't do it either. I don't care one way or another, I still don't do it because that's not how I learned it, but what are yalls thoughts and how did you learn it?

On a side note, I did not know the original salute to the flag during pledge until recently. PC even way back in the 1940s. Germany and Italy did it that way too... so we changed.

I'm the same,way, hand over the heart was for the Pledge of Allegiance, hat in hand, hands to our sides for the Anthem. I don't know when the etiquette changed, if it did, but I still follow that policy.

joe817 wrote:What anti-American, anti-God and anti-patriotic people do they have up there in New York state?

From the article: "The flags, which were only recently mounted on the trucks at the request of the union, were removed during a ceremony at Arlington headquarters in the Town of Poughkeepsie on Tuesday.

Union President Joseph Tarquinio said he's disappointed in the board's direction, but "if we had to take them down, they had to be taken down the right way. At the time when the country needs unity, to do something like this ... it's next to flag-burning in my mind."

I'll bet the Arlington, TX fire chief threw up on his keyboard when he read that story (mentioning Arlington....NOT Texas)

Forum decorum does not allow me to express my true feelings. A 10 line string of profanities are but the tip of the iceberg in expressing my disgust!

I think you may have hit on the real reason foe their removal, in that the union, did not get permission from the board, who want's to have control. This is probably the result of a union disagreement, or recent wage scale increase that the board opposed, and this is the only way they can show who's boss. Pretty poor decision, either way. They have them on most of the trucks I see around here.