Furor Over Flag Burning

What’s all this flag stuff? What is all this anger and outrage really all about?

A salute to The Times for printing Hendrik Hertzberg’s “The Flag Is Fireproof” (Op-Ed Page, June 29)! Indeed it is.

Just for the record, I am the middle-aged widow of a U.S. career officer who died of his service-connected disability--and I still have the flag that covered his coffin at Arlington, Va., where he is buried.

For 27 years we lived around the country and the world, our family went where our “flag” went, but I never believed for one minute that a flag was what it was all about, and neither did my husband. He didn’t fight for a flag, he didn’t die for a flag.

I never thought I’d be in full agreement with this Supreme Court, but unless some sinister, Machiavellian motive is involved I salute them, too, for their integrity in this decision.

Each year I go back east for a visit with family and friends and I go to my husband’s grave in Arlington. When I see the flag flying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier my heart catches in my throat. Just as it does when I hear “Taps.” But it’s not my icon; I don’t confuse respect for it as a symbol as the measuring stick for the depth of my loyalty to this country.

If some misguided jerk wants to burn a flag . . . well, I pray he continues to have that right. As for me, I don’t have to give him the time of day: All I want him to be given is his constitutional right!

MRS. LESLEY M. IRBY

Dana Point