Doug Wells
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Posted on: Jun. 01 2009,11:15 am |
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Flag Day Observance
The Orange B.P.O.E. Elks 1475 calls all it members, family, guests and friends to our annual observance of Flag Day 2009 Wednesday Evening June 17, 2009 at 7:00 P.M. in the Lodge Room.  It will be an evening of celebration of “Old Glory” and the history she has followed since the Revolutionary War. Participants include a Guest Speaker (TBD), our own Boy Scout, Cub Scout, Girl Scout Troops, Emblem Club, and Elk Officers. Dinner will be served prior to the observance by our lead Chef Timbo who will work his culinary magic. Read below to find out more about “Flag Day” and its history.
On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress replaced the British symbols of the Grand Union flag with a new design featuring 13 white stars in a circle on a field of blue and 13 red and white stripes, one for each state. Although it is not certain, this flag may have been made by the Philadelphia seamstress Betty Ross, who was an official flag maker for the Pennsylvania Navy. The number of stars increased as the new states entered the Union, but the number of stripes stopped at 15 and  as later returned to 13.
In June 1886 Bernard Cigrand made his first public proposal for the annual observance of the birth of the flag when he wrote an article titled “The Fourteenth of June” in the old Chicago Argus newspaper. An effort to ensure national observance of Flag Day finally came when President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation calling for a nationwide observance of the event on June 14, 1916. However, Flag Day did not become official until August 1949, when President Harry Truman signed the legislation and proclaimed June 14 as Flag Day. In 1966, Congress also requested that the President issue annually a proclamation designating the week in which June 14 occurs as National Flag Week.
The President is requested to issue each year a proclamation to: call on government officials in the USA to display the flag of the United States on all government buildings on Flag Day; and to urge US residents to observe Flag Day as the anniversary of the adoption on June 14, 1777, by the Continental Congress of the Stars and Stripes as the official flag of the United States.
The American flag, also nicknamed as “Old Glory” or “Star-Spangled Banner” has changed designs over the centuries. It consists of 13 equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing 50 small, white, five-pointed stars. Each of the 50 stars represent the 50 states in the United States and the 13 stripes represent the original 13 colonies that became the first states in the Union.
This is not only Flag Day but also the U.S. Army’s 234th Birthday! Happy Birthday all you G.I Joe’s!
Scott F. McKee,Veterans of Foreign Wars Department Service Officer,
Flag Day Chairman
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Have a great ! 
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