Stars and Stripes Saluted Across the Nation
Ceremonies varied from the opulent to the heartwarming on Flag Day Sunday as 100 sailors unfurled an 85-foot-long American flag in Boston Harbor and a three-piece band played “God Bless America” at a flagpole dedication in a tiny North Dakota town.
The 75-member Lexington Pops Chorus provided the music in Boston as a crane helped Navy personnel in dress whites unfurl the giant flag in front of the Constitution. “Old Ironsides,” the Navy’s oldest commissioned warship, responded with a cannon salute.
Gilby, N.D., population 280, put up a 30-foot-tall flagpole.
“The last one got hooked onto the bumper of somebody’s pickup and got torn down,” said Denise Karley, who heads Gilby’s Centennial Committee. “Or maybe that was the one before.”
In a Chicago suburb, the former commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, retired Army Gen. William C. Westmoreland, told 180 boys in a Flag Day speech to “be all that you can be.”
“You should aspire to be a leader in some field of worthy endeavor and be an ethical role model,” Westmoreland said at the Glenwood School for Boys, which serves boys from broken homes.
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