Electra Glide In Blue

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

On this day back in 1777, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the Stars and Stripes as the national flag.

Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, delivered a 1914 Flag Day address in which he repeated words he said the flag had spoken to him that morning

“I am what you make me; nothing more. I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol of yourself.”

It was not until 1949, that President Truman signed an Act of Congress designating June 14th of each year as National Flag Day.
So today, we members of The Sons of the American Legion met at 0600 this morning, and posted 34 sets of flags along 4th street, downtown Loveland.

We then retired the flags at 1800.

This is something we have done for the last nine years. We just don’t do this on Flag Day, but on Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Veterans Day. Four times a year we take to the downtown street and post Old Glory to the left, and the Colorado State flag to the right. Some people stop to ask “why?” most folks give us a warm “thank you”.
I hope you enjoyed Flag Day this year,
and if you did, thank a veteran.
Ride safe.

My earliest memories of this day go back with my Grandparents…. Decoration Day is what this day was called. We would load up their 57 Chevy with fresh garden flowers and head out to the cemetery on the 29th, the day before Memorial Day. Back then Memorial Day or Decoration Day as my Grandma always called it, was always observed on May 30th.

At the cemetery we would place the freshly cut flowers on the graves of my Grandparents father’s, both Civil War veterans, members of the Grand Army of the Republic.

My Grandfathers Dad was with Company G, 12th Indiana Volunteer Cavalry, which is all the Civil War history I have on him. He is in the photo below, bottom row standing 5th one on the right.

My Grandmothers Dad served three years in Company E, 50th Illinois Inf. According to his obituary dated 1909, he was in all the great battles about Chattanooga, and the Atlanta campaign, where he was under fire for a hundred days. He was also on Sherman’s great raid through Georgia and North and South Carolina. He was at Altoona Pass on the October day when Gen. Sherman signaled his famous order to Gen. Corse, to “Hold The Fort, For I Am Coming”. He then marched with his regiment from Goldsboro, NC, through Richmond, and Virginia, then marched on to Washington City, and took part in the Grand Review on the 24th of May, 1865. He is in the photo below, holding the Flag.

This picture was taken around 1906 of the Civil War veterans from the Morocco, Indiana area.

Standing, back row from left- Sam Thomas, Capt. Dan Graves, John Brown, Jonathan Bell, Niel Shue, Finley Shafer, Jacob Hosier, Fred Bartholomew, George Clark, George Weber, William Handley, F. Flemming, James Shafer.
Bottom row, standing- John Don, Andrew Flowers, Rev.George Musson, Rev. Greenway, Fred Mashino, Sitting- Henry G. Sayler, Andrew Ellis, John Vayette, John Grant, Frank Roadruck, George Baker, Cal Sarver, Cyrus Brunton, George Benjamin, David Dexter, John Garrard.

However you celebrate Memorial Day this year, however solemn or happy the occasion, spare a thought and a moment of silence in memory of all those who paid for your freedom with their lives, and of all those who defend it still.