Family Flag and Pride Fly Higher

The Munson family flag has flown over the U.S. Capitol, drawn salutes at Pearl Harbor and waved proudly at the largest family reunion ever held in the United States.

All of that paled in comparison, however, to the royal treatment the well-traveled, star-spangled banner received this week while flying triumphantly during the opening ceremonies at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.

The flag was volunteered for duty by retired Thousand Oaks resident Pat Munson, an amateur genealogist and an 11th-generation member of one of America’s most documented lineages.

Munson told library officials of the flag’s illustrious past and they immediately agreed to fly it, he said.

“When Gen. Colin Powell led everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance during Monday’s ceremonies on television, that was our family flag they were saluting,” Munson said Tuesday after attending Community Day at the library.

“Patriotism comes out stronger as one of our family traits than anything. I have a great deal of pride that our family flag played some small part in this dedication,” said Munson, who traces his roots back to Thomas Munson, a founding father of the Connecticut colony in the 17th Century.

Munson said his favorite part of Monday’s televised ceremony was when country singer Lee Greenwood sang “I’m Proud to Be an American” and his local television station zoomed in on the family flag flying over the proceedings.

“I videotaped that part and plan to show it at our next family reunion,” Munson said, adding that the flag will probably become valuable over time thanks to its role in the ceremony.

The story behind the Munson family flag goes back to the mid-1980s, Munson said, when he was preparing for the family’s 250th reunion.

One of Munson’s cousins, Jim Munson, a retired Vietnam-era general, asked a senator for an official flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol. The 1,500 Munsons pledged allegiance to that banner when they met in August of 1987 at Yale University--which family patriarch Thomas Munson helped found by donating land and money to its predecessor, Yale College.

Since then the flag has flown over regional Munson family reunions nationwide, including one in Hawaii last May.

While in Hawaii, Munson flew the family flag over the battleship Arizona, which was sunk during the Japanese raids on Pearl Harbor and which still serves as a monument. He also flew it over the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl on Oahu, where eight members of the Munson family who died in World Wars I and II are buried.

All of this has led Munson to increase his own genealogical activities, which now include making plans for a Munson family museum and collaborating with 40 other family members from around the country on a third volume of the Munson family story. The first two volumes, written over a 16-year period by Myron Munson, were published in 1896.

According to this two-volume family history, patriarch Thomas Munson was a town leader in New Haven, a militia leader and one of the draftees of Connecticut’s Fundamental Agreement, which gave Connecticut citizens many of the formal rights guaranteed later in the Bill of Rights.

The new additions to the family history will include 20th-Century Munsons who have been inventors, business and government leaders and even one famous athlete, ex-New York Yankee catcher Thurman Munson, who died while piloting his own plane in 1979.

There will probably be mention of a famous flag as well.