Tomorrow is Flag Day, a moment in time when we stand proudly recognizing the symbol of our national identity. Near the end of the first year of American independence, on June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress decreed that a new flag representing the union of the 13 colonies should be the emblem of the country.
General George Washington wanted the new flag to be a means of pulling together the former British colonies with a symbol that would override the various state flags especially in times of battle, showing the disparate regiments the unity of their common cause. He did not want confusion in the ranks while the fighting was continuing.
The Congress declared that the flag would consist of the 13 stripes in red and white alternating colors, with 13 stars in the field of blue in the upper left corner. The stars in the blue background represented a new constellation. The basic design has remained, with the only alterations being the additions of new stars as new states joined the federal union.
As a national commemoration, Flag Day did not take hold for over a century. On June 14, 1885, Bernard Cigrand, a 19-year-old teacher in Stony Hill School, a one-room schoolhouse in Waubeka, Wisconsin, gathered his students together to celebrate the Flag Birth Day.
Dr. Cigrand traveled around the country advocating for a national observance of Flag Day. In the course of his career he delivered over 2000 speeches promoting patriotism and devotion to the flag. The idea inspired many others to follow, and celebrations became widely popular. By 1916 the movement had gained such momentum that President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed a national Flag Day.
Ironically, that same year Stony Hill School closed. By then Dr. Cigrand had left teaching to become a dentist in Illinois, but he returned to the academic world as a professor and later dean of what became the University of Illinois School of Dentistry.
He died in 1932, and today he is recognized as the Father of Flag Day, having been given that appellation originally by The Chicago Tribune. The flag flies 24-hours a day over the grave of Francis Scott Key in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland. Perhaps it should fly likewise over the grave of Dr. Cigrand in Riverside Cemetery in Montgomery, Illinois.
In 1947, restoration began on the Stony Hill School, which was completed by 1952. In 1972, it was declared a National Historic Site. In keeping with the tradition that Dr. Cigrand began, tomorrow the school, now a museum, will host the senior national celebration of Flag Day. In 1949, Congress enacted legislation, signed by President Harry S Truman, that established a national observance of June 14th as Flag Day.
Flag Day is not a national holiday, despite Dr. Cigrand’s efforts to make it one, but it is a national observance. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was the first state to make the day a state holiday.
Here in the Northern Neck, since 1952, the principal celebration of Flag Day has centered at Colonial Beach. In that year, on Saturday, June 14, the first Potomac River Festival, now an annual occurrence, sponsored by the town and the Chamber of Commerce, took place there with a parade and all the usual festivities associated with patriotic events. The town missed by two years the opportunity to claim having hosted the first Flag Day Parade, that honor going to Appleton, Wisconsin.
Flag Day is a day of celebration and gratitude for our country and the great benefits and blessings it affords us as free citizens. The flag is more than a symbol or emblem; it is the embodiment of what we are as Americans. Long may it wave!
