Flag Day ceremony set today
Sunday, June 14, 2009 1:24 AM PDT
Larry Meyer
Argus Observer
ONTARIO -The Ontario Elks Lodge will hold its annual Flag Day Ceremony at 2 p.m. today in Lions Park or, in the case of rain, at the Elks Lodge.
The event will include a special ceremony declaring the community’s commitment to the people in the armed forces and their families.
Ed Jones, Flag Day Chairman for the Ontario Elks Lodge, said lodge officials received a request to sign a community covenant with the U.S. Army, similar to ones signed in other communities around the state.
“It is going to be one of the first local ones,” Jones said. A representative of the U.S. Army from Boise will be on hand to represent the military, Jones said, with the mayor on hand to sign for the city.
“It’s a document that states communities’ support their military and families,” he said
The Elks Lodge, nationally, has been observing Flag Day since 1907, Jones said.
The Ontario Lodge has been holding Flag Day ceremonies since it was formed in 1946.
According to a history of Flag Day prepared by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the resolution on the design of the flag of the United States was approved by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777. The design was the work of a special committee assigned for that task.
There have been many claims to the first official observance of Flag Day, the earliest claim came from Hartford, Conn., which had a celebration during the summer of 1861.
Later, schools all over America held Flag Day programs to contribute to the Americanization of immigrant children and the observances spread into the communities. Although Flag Day is a nationwide observance, Pennsylvania became the first, and only, state to establish the June 14 as legal on May 7, 1937.
William T. Kerr, who generally receives the honors of being the “Father of Flag Day” is credited with founding the American Flag Day Association while still in school in Pittsburgh.
President Woodrow Wilson, in 1916 and later President Calvin Coolidge, issued proclamation that called for June 14 to be observed as National Flag Day. But the official designation did not come until Aug. 3 1949, when Congress approved the national observance and President Harry Truman signed it into law.
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