Days of Drums, Days of Bugles

The only reminder I have of my father is his Silver Star.

I keep it framed in my writing room at a place where the sun catches it in the late afternoon, adding a glow to the medal that hangs below its red, white and blue ribbon.

He won it in World War I while a rifleman with Company B of the 363rd Infantry Division, attacking a German machine gun nest on the battlefields of France to save his comrades.

I thought about him as I researched today’s column. It’s about that vote two weeks ago in which the House of Representatives approved a constitutional amendment ultimately aimed at those who would desecrate the American flag.

The amendment’s got a long way to go before it gets anywhere, first to the U.S. Senate and then to the states for ratification. The likelihood is it will never pass, but that doesn’t temper the debate.

It began a long time ago, coming to fruition in the 1960s when burning the flag became a popular means of protest against the war in Vietnam. This resulted in some states passing laws against that sort of behavior, but they were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1989 as unconstitutional.

Ten years later a group that calls itself the Citizens Flag Alliance is trying again for a law to protect the nation’s emblem, but this time as an amendment to the Constitution. I couldn’t help but wonder what my father would have thought about that.

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Retired Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady sounded a little like my old man when I spoke with him by phone a couple of days ago. He’s a Medal of Honor winner from the Vietnam War and chairman of the Citizens Flag Alliance.

My father had strong opinions and wasn’t afraid to express them. That’s the way Brady is. When I asked if he felt the proposed flag protection amendment flew in the face of free speech, he blew me back with a booming response:

“If I thought it threatened the 1st Amendment, I wouldn’t be involved in it! Burning the flag is conduct and has nothing to do with free speech . . . and 80% of the American people feel the same way!”

He expressed righteous anger at the “political hacks” in the Supreme Court and at the enemies of flag protection “in the schoolroom, the courtroom and the newsroom.”

Ramona Ripston, on the other hand, doesn’t see it that way and she’s no stranger to a firm opinion either. Dubbed “Ramona the Ripper” by her respectful adversaries, she’s been executive director of the ACLU in Los Angeles since 1972 and knows a little something about enemies too, but these are the enemies of civil liberties and human rights.

Ripston calls the proposed amendment “stupid” and “a specious effort by right-wing politicians to create an issue that doesn’t exist.”

“There is no problem with flag burnings,” she said in a tone that lacked equivocation. “When was the last time anyone burned a flag? The people who propose this amendment don’t want to focus on real problems, like gun control or the alienation of our children.”

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I also talked with Frank Ortiz, adjutant of Los Angeles’ American Legion Post 381, with 2,200 members the largest in California. Ortiz is an Army veteran of the Korean War, the husband of a former WAC, the son of a World War II Navy veteran, the father of a soldier who served in the Gulf War and the brother of a former Marine who fought in Vietnam.

A little advice: Don’t burn the flag when Frank is in the neighborhood. “It’s a hate crime to burn our flag!” he thunders in a tone that evokes drums and bugles. “The flag is us!”

I think my father would have felt the same way. There was a divorce in the family and I didn’t know him well, but I did know that he had a great love for this country and wasn’t afraid to express it.

I’m more like Jack Siegal, a Navy combat correspondent in the Korean War who spent time with my outfit, the 1st Marine Division. He’s torn.

“Flag burning is despicable and I’d like to throttle anyone who did it,” he said the other day, adding slowly, “but we do have the Bill of Rights.”

I guess I’m torn too. I’d never burn a flag, but, and you know how this goes, I’d defend with my life your right to do so. It’s what this country is all about, greater than the sum of its sometimes angry parts, larger than the emblem whose sanctity we debate.

I honor these ideals, to disagree on principles but to stand together in adversity . . . and I salute in silence a Silver Star that glows in the faint afternoon sun on a day to remember at a time to reflect.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.