Roy Exum
Every rule carries its own exemption and, while the Supreme Court protects those who burn our nation’s flag under the First Amendment (you cannot deny freedom of speech), I believe there needs to be a harsh exception made in our love for “Ol’ Glory.” Thousands of Americans gave their lives for the flag, easily the most feared symbol on any battlefield the world over, and one of war time’s biggest fallacies is that every soldier dies immediately once they are shot.
Sometimes death doesn’t come for days and there is no torture that even comes close.
Time and time again we are repulsed by the beach scene that opens the film, “Saving Private Ryan.” Not a one of us can withstand the emotion of a military officer pressing a folded flag to a mother watching her son be buried. “On behalf of the President of the United States, (the United States Army; the United States Marine Corps; the United States Navy; or the United States Air Force), and a grateful Nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.”
Make no mistake – the flag is all that’s left for the bereaved to touch, that you can see above the hearth’s mantle in countless homes across our nation. So when word reaches me that Steven Fridley, obviously some naïve punk and a self-avowed member of some quasi-Communist faction, just settled for $50,000 out-of-court settlement with the city of Cleveland, this after he and 17 others were taken to jail after burning American flags outside The Republican Convention in 2016, I have to take one of my anti-nausea tablets.
President Trump feels just as strongly as I do in our zeal to protect those things we love. At the time of the flag-burning at the Cleveland convention he tweeted, “Take away their citizenship? A Year in prison?” but I like the citizenship option: The two foremost Communist countries are Cuba and Russia. You get a one-bag limit, only a one-way ticket, and when your “comrades” find you have no money, you think they are going to pitch in for a traitor? By the way, that word that has its own solution in Communist countries.
But wait! Whoa ... there is a place Steven and his other Communist kids may fit in just fine. Laguna Beach, Calif, just got its name in the running for a new Fruit Loops when a redesign on the town’s police cars sent the squirrelly crowd running around in circles.
Up until now the cop cars were white and rather mundane but a new look shows the words ‘Police’ with a cheery American flag motif. But the tree-huggers, the All-Bran eaters, and the legions in the state who believe cannabis should become the state flower were “shocked” to see the newly-painted squad cars making the rounds.
One said, “We have such an amazing community of artists here, and I thought the aesthetic didn’t really represent our community. It feels ... feels ... very aggressive,” as she shared her innermost being. But lawyer Jennifer Welsh Zeiter had a far better hand on the pulse of the community. She believes left-coast types are so blinded by their hatred for the president that “they cannot see through their current biases to realize a police vehicle with the American flag is the ultimate American expression.”
Of course, she is right. Over 5 million people have fled California in the last 10 years and it is accelerating due to crippling taxes, raw feces on every street you look in San Francisco, and an uncertainty over everything from your neighbors, the Gestapo attitudes by law enforcement, and – yes – the fact that 40 percent of the homes are where English is a second language.
Get this from the LA Times: “Longtime Laguna Beach resident Patrick Cannon said that when he sees the new logo on police cars, he sees “Immigration and Customs Enforcement” because the red and white of the flag runs through the capital letters “ice” in “police.” Huh? That’s what he said. “We’re rainbow-sandal-wearing, avocado-eating … surfers and artists, and inclusion is part of our town,” Cannon said. “We do not include our Hispanic community by putting ‘ICE’ on our police cars.”
The Times reporter also found a veteran to ask: “Jim Gilchrist (Vietnam), said he was “awed” to see the number of Laguna Beach residents who came out to support the flag. “This flag is very personal to me,” he said, choking up at the memory of fellow Marines who died in the war. “I fly a flag in front of my house to remember those men every day. To have that flag on a police car is great.”
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“And let us never forget that in honoring our flag, we honor the American men and women who have courageously fought and died for it over the last 200 years, patriots who set an ideal above any consideration of self. Our flag flies free today because of their sacrifice.” – Ronald Reagan.
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Just as I polished this column off, I checked my email. I knew my dear friend Charley Hicks had died several days before … and I’ve got a tickler on my files to remember him, as well as arguably the best quarterback ever at UTC, Johnny Green. (Yeah that’s the one – he flattened UT in Neyland Stadium and sheriff Bookie Turner was so ecstatic they took him to the Knox County lock-up!)
Last night, Anna G. Joujan-Goss, a granddaughter Charley was deliriously proud of, dropped me a note about her PaCharley, who was equally a star in any venue, and perhaps she didn’t know I have loved PaCharley on every Sunday morning for over 50 years, Really, this goes so far back I got to know him before I got out of short britches. PaCharley is with the angels but I think you’ll see where his dignity, his lovable heart, his boundary-free love for the Lord, and his sense of humor will certainly go on.
CHARLIE HICKS IS FINALLY ‘HOME’
Anna writes to me: Grief has no sense of decorum. So it did not occur to me to question my actions when I interrupted the chaplain, with his head bowed and hands folded, to place myself in front of my grandfather’s face. As he tugged on the tubes, wildly waving his hands, and craning his neck up while his head turned side to side, I planted my face in front of his. “Hi PaCharley,” I said. Over. And over. I saw his clear blue eyes. I saw him. He saw me.
After weeks of stoic, walls-up, business-mode, yesterday my dam broke. Intending to call my husband, and update him on the coming family meeting at the hospital, instead I lost it. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I’m so sorry . . .” It was an involuntary, illogical (so I thought) reaction, but I lost all control.
Had our year gone as planned, we would not be here now. We would be in the flurries of school life, finishing out the year in Ghana. Only after arriving would we find out the family business that would occupy us so completely, for so many weeks, that would pass in a rapid blur.
Truthfully, over the past couple of months, I have questioned what I’m doing here at all. With nothing tangible to account for our days, they have, at times, felt wasted. And the “work” we’ve been doing has left me painfully aware of my shortcomings. I have been impatient with errand-running and hospital visits, and bad-attitudes about the changed grandfather he seemed to be.
The man who never met a soul he didn’t like would now complain about doctors and nurses. The man who was always in a good mood spoke constantly of how bad he felt, and how much the tubes, the pricks, and the medicines were bugging him. He fought back, trying to coax forbidden foods and drinks from unsuspecting visitors. And I watched, stunned at the changes in this man I’d loved all my life.
Mind you, he still had good moments and “normal” days as well, but the negative moments were so shocking to my perfect image of him that they overshadowed the good. I wondered why he couldn’t let people do what they needed to do to care for him, and I even resented the trouble caused for those closest to him.
But yesterday I realized how wrong my perception had been. When I saw him—and when he saw me—all I could think was ‘I get it.’ I see. I see.
I see a man who has lived 92 beautiful and full years. A man who has given himself, without reservation, to his children, his grandchildren, and his great-grandchildren. A man who has worked hard, running his own business and rising up from the depression era. A man who fought well, who “won,” as his great grandson aptly noted, as a good, good soldier. A man who “fought the good fight,([who) finished the race . . .” (2 Timothy 4: 7-8, NIV)
And now, for the past few months, he has been unable to care for others, wholly dependent on the help of those of us who had always before come to him for that same help. He never wanted anyone to trouble themselves over him. He never wanted to be a burden, on anyone. And when the time came for his independence to be gone, he fought back.
One week ago, on his 70th anniversary, he told my grandmother that he intended to be home in a week. He told her this as if he was going to get back to independent living in the house he had loved for 50 years. But when my sister relayed this to me over the phone last night we knew what had happened. PaCharley was true to his word.
PaCharley found his way home.
royexum@aol.com
Charley Hicks