Veterans hold flag retirement ceremony

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Members of local veterans groups gathered under cloudy skies Saturday morning for a flag retirement ceremony in the parking lot of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5803 in Van Wert.

The ceremony, which is held by veterans groups and scout groups to officially honor old and used flags being taken out of service, is one normally held every year or two by such groups. The ceremony Saturday at VFW Post 5803 was presented by VFW Post Commander Pat Freeman and incoming commander Derek Sneed.

As Sneed held the representative folded American flag to be retired, Commander Freeman spoke the words from a portion of the Flag Code used for retiring flags.

“This flag has served its nation well and long,” the VFW post commander noted. “It is worn to a condition in which it should no longer be used to represent the nation.

“This flag represents all of the flags collected and being retired from service today,” he noted, adding, “The honor we show here for this one flag, we are showing for all of the flags, even those not physically here.”

Following Commander Freeman’s introduction, those present recited “The Pledge of Allegiance” and Sneed then proceeded to burn the representative flag in an incinerator used for that purpose.

After the ceremony, the remainder of flags collected since the last flag retirement ceremony are then burned, a task that can take anywhere from an hour or two to becoming a daylong task. In fact, that was the case for the last flag retirement ceremony, local veteran and Van Wert City Councilman Bill Marshall noted after the ceremony.

“We had collected close to 6,000 flags and it took until approximately 10 at night to retire all of them,” Marshall said, adding the backlog of flags occurred because a flag retirement ceremony, for one reason or another, had not been held in several years.