AJC > Sandy Springs > Blog > Archives > 2007 > June > 25
Monday, June 25, 2007
Let’s keep Old Glory glorious
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a week or so we’ll be celebrating the Fourth of July and you won’t be able to turn around without seeing red, white and blue. They are this nation’s colors and I think it’s nice a couple of times a year that we get a little teary-eyed and patriotic.
And with that same thought, could someone please make sure the flag flying outside the Sandy Springs post office in the City Walk shopping center gets replaced? I noticed the flag has seen much better days. It’s badly faded and threadbare and ragged.
I don’t know if it’s up to the City Walk folks or the post office employees - but someone needs to step up and make this right. And they need to do it today.
I know a flag is just a piece of cloth. I know that not everyone has the same reverence for it that I do, but that doesn’t mean we just let it rot at the top of a metal pole.
I can promise you just about anyone who served in the military would be bothered by it. Not to mention anyone who has a son, daughter, and spouse or loved one of any relation in uniform with their boots on the ground in the Middle East.
Maybe it is just a piece of cloth, but it stands for something. It stands for the price paid more than 200 years ago for this country to exist in the first place. For all our problems, and we have more than our fair share, this is still the country seen as the land of opportunity. This is the country people outside our borders look to step up when a crisis hits.
We’re free. We grow up in a country that has as level a playing field to compete on as any place on this earth. We live in a place that reaches its hand out to help other without thinking about the cost.
Doesn’t the symbol of this country deserve a little more respect? Don’t we owe it that much?
