Flying high on the Fourth of July

A gesture of love and a hopeful prayer on a summer breeze

WATERLOO — As I cool off on a quiet but hot Fourth of July afternoon after a morning workout, I’m a little saddened.

I’m hearing some muffled misgivings by some folks about flying the flag on the day of our nation’s birth.

Some folks are afraid if they fly their nation’s colors they’ll be misinterpreted as being of one political persuasion or another. Or they’re just down on the way things have gone lately.

I don’t begrudge anyone their feelings, but personally, that just makes me want to fly the flag more — for what we aspire to be as a people and hope for our nation, with all our shortcomings.

I can’t speak for others but flying the flag reminds me of home, of family, of security and of love — things worth preserving and what I wish for everyone.

When I was a kid, not one, not two, but three flags flew from the Kinney house on our big corner lot. Dad, who was a World War II veteran, saw to that and instilled it in us.

We had one on the porch, one on the corner of the house and one on a makeshift flagpole on a corner fencepost in the backyard.

With Dad’s encouragement, as a little boy I would parade that flag down the sidewalk, climb up the slope to the fencepost and set that flag, fastened to two eyelets screwed into a wooden pole like a long broom handle, into a lead pipe crimped at one end and wired to the fencepost.

It was my little Iwo Jima flag raising. I’m pretty sure Dad was pleased.

So, when Dad died in 1990, and we were presented with his casket flag at graveside, my big brother George, who accepted it, turned around later and gave it to me. And my sister said maybe I could parade it around the house like I did when I was little. It gave us a great laugh amid the tears.

I still have Dad’s casket flag. And now I have the flags of two of my mom’s recently deceased brothers, my Uncle John, who served in the Navy in World War II, and my Uncle Adrian, who served in the Army in the Philippines during that war.

My mom worked in a defense plant during World War II. My big brothers Mike and George both served in the Air Force and Navy in the 1960s. I have a great nephew in the Louisiana National Guard who served a year’s deployment in the Middle East. I have a niece whose husband is a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force and believe me, families serve together.

My step grandfather served during World War I. My maternal great-great grandfather served in Company D, 47th Iowa Infantry in Missouri and Arkansas in 1864 during the Civil War. And our cousin who served in the Marines in Vietnam lost his life to PTSD suicide in 1991.

So the colors run deep in my family and the flag flies high. And that’s all there is to it.

It’s a gesture of love — love of my family, love of everything that’s good about this land, a symbol of what it aspires to be and a prayer of hope for the future.

That flag flies on these special days as long as I have air in my lungs and blood in my veins.

As Woody Guthrie wrote, this land is your land. And this flag is your flag.

Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. They are listed here. Clink on their individual links to check them out, subscribe for free - and, if you believe in the value of quality journalism, please support this column and/or any of theirs with a paid subscription. Thank you.