Remembering Flag Day

Among holidays, Flag Day is one that doesn't get a lot of notice.

It's been around a while. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation officially establishing June 14 as Flag Day. In August 1949, an Act of Congress established National Flag Day. If you live in certain parts of the country, you might notice more flags than usual are flying today. Plus, a few towns have parades, including Troy, N.Y., which has the biggest Flag Day parade in the nation, with 50,000 expected to attend today. And this year marks the centennial of the oldest Flag Day parade in the nation in Fairfield, Wash.

But Flag Day is not an official federal holiday, though on June 14, 1937, Pennsylvania became the first---and so far only---state to recognize it.

In my family, though, the day is beginning to take on special significance. This Flag Day my son Cole, who just finished his sophomore year at the U.S. Air Force Academy, will be at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The Academy is an inspiring but somewhat surreal place, where you're likely to run into colonels and congressmen but less likely to encounter the enlisted personnel who make up the vast majority of Air Force ranks. After spending two years in this rarefied atmosphere, this three-week experience at Lackland will allow him to see what it's like to be on a real Air Force base.

What makes this assignment interesting to my family is that on Flag Day 1951, Cole's grandfather---Tom Johnston, my wife's father---was sworn in to the Air Force and assigned to basic training at Lackland. So Cole will be walking some of the same dusty streets of west-central Texas that his grandfather walked more than a half-century earlier.

The summers in Texas are hot. Cole called home after a week at Lackland to tell us that the temperature had already hit 100 degrees, and in the days before air conditioning, when Tom Johnston was there, it must have been miserable.

But those who remember even the rudiments of American history know that the hottest place on the planet during the summer of 1951 was not Texas, but in the mountains along the 38th parallel in Korea. That's where Cole's other grandfather---Carlos Smith, my father---spent Flag Day that year.

The Korean War is sometimes called "The Forgotten War," but it is well-remembered by the men who fought there. The summer of 1951 was among the deadliest seasons in that deadly war. The battles of Bloody Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge, two battles in a mountainous area known as The Punchbowl, began that summer and went into the fall. My father participated in both those battles, which between them produced almost 7,000 U.S. casualties. He survived Bloody Ridge, but six days into the battle of Heartbreak Ridge an exploding mortar shell sent him to a M.A.S.H. unit and then to a hospital in Seoul. He came home with a Purple Heart and severely impaired hearing. Tom Johnston barely missed going to Korea. He became a saxophone player in an Air Force band and an aide to a colonel. That colonel gave him the choice of going either to Korea or Cleveland. He wisely chose Cleveland.

I do not know what is ahead for their grandson, my son. America is once again in a shooting war that---like Korea---seems forgotten by most Americans on a day-to-day basis. But I become more aware with each passing day---each day that Cole comes closer to graduation---that we are taking casualties there. Indeed, several recent Academy graduates have been killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

These heroes join Lance Sijan, the most famous Air Force Academy graduate. On Flag Day 1965, Sijan---recently graduated and newly commissioned---was preparing for pilot training. Two years later, his F-4 was shot down over Vietnam. Sijan was badly wounded but nonetheless evaded capture for 46 days before being taken prisoner. Following brutal torture, escape and recapture, and other remarkable acts of courage and heroism that today every Academy cadet must commit to memory, Sijan died in captivity. He was 25 years old. The day before Flag Day in 1968, Sijan was posthumously promoted to captain. In 1976, he was awarded the Medal of Honor, the only Air Force Academy graduate ever to receive the highest honor the military bestows.

These stories, and the possibilities they suggest, both inspire me and haunt me. Because of the sacrifice of others, I have luxury and liberty to type these words in air-conditioned comfort. I will never endure Lance Sijan's brutal beatings or the close-quarter combat my father experienced. Not even the relatively minor hardship of blazing Texas heat that Tom Johnston and Cole Smith experienced at Lackland Air Force Base, 59 summers apart---relatively minor, yes, but endured dutifully, honorably.

I reflect on this honorable service---service that when the occasion demanded rose to the level of heroism---and I do sometimes feel guilty, as if I haven't done my fair share.

Mostly, though, as I hold all these stories in my mind on this Flag Day 2010, I just feel grateful---and proud.