Grandfather Displayed a Flag

Why My Grandfather Displayed a Flag by Dr. Jim Denison

There are three ways we come to appreciate and even to venerate one aspect of our lives above others.

First, we learn more about it and thus come to appreciate its uniqueness and significance. For example, lawyers understand and appreciate the law more than the rest of us. The same is true for physicians with our bodies, botanists with trees, ornithologists with birds, archaeologists with archaeology, and meteorologists with weather.

Second, we experience the lack of it. We don't think much about gas stations unless we cannot find one and our car's gauge is on empty. Or restaurants unless we are unusually hungry. Or air unless we are underwater. Or water unless we are parched.

Third, we pay a price on its behalf or in its defense. My grandfather fought in World War I and displayed a flag outside his home every day thereafter for the rest of his life. A neighbor in my community displays an American flag on a tall flagpole and beneath it the Marine Corp flag. The second explains his veneration for the first.

My father, a veteran of World War II, understood our nation through the prism of that conflict in ways those who did not serve could not. During his service, he experienced the deprivation of the freedom and prosperity he fought to defend on our behalf. The horrors he witnessed and the suffering he faced only heightened his love for his nation.

I am confident that the last paragraph describes millions of America's veterans today.