Respect for the Flag Begins at Home

14 flag etiquette guidelines and how to teach our children respect for those who served.

Our son after an Airborne jump, beside the toy soldiers my dad played with as a child during World War II. The rolled letter is one our son wrote to us while serving in the Army. Each holds a piece of our family’s history that I want to pass to our grandchildren.

We cannot expect our children to appreciate the country they will inherit if we never talk with them about what it cost others to preserve it. Veterans Day is a wonderful time to have these conversations, beginning with the people in our own families who served.

At dinner this Veterans Day, ask your children what they know about those relatives. Do they know where they served or how that service changed their lives? These stories belong around the family table, where the next generation can learn about the sacrifices others made for them and understand why we treat the American flag with respect.

Observed every year on November 11, Veterans Day honors Americans who have served in our armed forces. It began as Armistice Day, marking the end of fighting in World War I at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. In 1954, Congress renamed it Veterans Day to honor veterans of all wars. While Memorial Day remembers those who died in military service, Veterans Day honors everyone who served, with special emphasis on thanking our living veterans. It is the perfect occasion to teach our children how to care for the flag our veterans served under.

How to Display and Care for the Flag

These 14 guidelines will help you fly your colors with respect and teach the next generation to appreciate the men and women who served under them.

1. Fly the flag from sunrise to sunset. This is the customary practice for outdoor displays on buildings and stationary flagpoles.
2. Illuminate it at night. The flag may remain on display after sunset if properly illuminated.
3. Consider the weather. Bring the flag inside during harsh weather unless it is an all-weather flag.
4. Fly it throughout the year. You do not need to wait for a special holiday. My family flies the flag year-round. On Veterans Day, fly the flag at full staff unless an official half-staff order is in effect. On Memorial Day, fly it at half-staff until noon, then raise it to full staff. The Flag Code also calls for display at schools during school days and at polling places on election days.
5. Keep the stars at the viewer’s upper left when hanging the flag on a wall. This applies whether the flag hangs horizontally or vertically. The blue field of stars is called the union, also known as the canton.
6. Position a window display for the person outside. The union should be at the upper left as seen by someone looking in from the street.
7. Place the U.S. flag on a speaker’s right. When displayed on a staff beside a speaker facing the audience, the flag goes to the audience’s left. A flag displayed flat should hang above and behind the speaker.
8. Give it the proper place in a parade. When carried alongside other flags, the U.S. flag belongs on the marching right, meaning the flag bearer’s right. If there is a line of other flags, the U.S. flag may be carried in front of the center of that line, leading the way.
9. Keep it above a state flag on the same pole. The U.S. flag always flies above other flags on the same pole.
10. Give the U.S. flag the position of honor beside state flags. When flags fly on separate poles, place the U.S. flag on the viewer’s left, with no state flag flying higher than the U.S. flag. Raise the U.S. flag first and lower it last.
11. Display other nations’ flags on separate poles. In peacetime, national flags should fly from poles of the same height and be approximately equal in size.
12. Mount it where it can fly freely. Choose a secure location high enough that the flag will not touch the ground or anything beneath it. This becomes especially important when hanging flags around a home or private property.
13. The flag should not be used as a table covering or gathered into decorative folds. Red, white, and blue bunting is appropriate for decorating a porch or buffet, with blue at the top, white in the middle, and red at the bottom.
14. Retire a worn flag with dignity. When a flag is no longer fit for display, the Flag Code calls for dignified destruction, preferably by burning. It does not require a particular folding ceremony or burial of ashes. A local American Legion or VFW post may accept flags for retirement. I suggest attending a flag retirement ceremony with your children. Watching a worn flag being retired creates a lasting understanding of the reverence we give our flag.

A Lesson From My Son

When my son was in the military, I noticed that the American flag on his right shoulder appeared backward. The stars were at the upper right, even though I knew they belonged at the viewer’s upper left when displayed on a wall. I asked him why.

Picture a soldier carrying a flag as he moves forward. The edge attached to the pole, where the stars are, leads the way, while the stripes stream behind him. The patch on his uniform follows that same idea: the stars face toward the soldier’s front, and the stripes extend toward his back.

On his right shoulder, this puts the stars at the viewer’s upper right, making the flag look backward. But imagine that shoulder as the flagpole, and the placement makes sense. The flag is shown moving forward with the soldier into battle, not retreating.

Bring the Conversation to the Table

This Veterans Day, take a few minutes at dinner to talk about the flag outside your home. Share a story about someone in your family who served and give your children time to ask questions. If you have a family member or neighbor who served and is comfortable sharing, invite that person to dinner.

Let the conversation include what we owe our country in everyday life. Our children learn how to be good citizens by watching how we treat a neighbor and how we speak about people with whom we disagree. Explain that we have the right to disagree with each other and express those disagreements because we are free. But the freedom we enjoy has been defended through the blood and sacrifice of others.

Then give your children a way to participate. Attend a Veterans Day ceremony together or take a meal to a veteran who lives alone and let your children help cook it and carry it to their home. They need to experience the work and the joy of caring for people beyond their own household.

My husband and I had a moving experience at a restaurant in Florida a few years ago. A World War II veteran who had landed on Omaha Beach was celebrating a birthday in a quiet corner with his family. Word spread quickly among the diners that this man was in the room. When he and his family prepared to leave, others paid for his meal, but even more moving, the entire restaurant rose to applaud him. There was not a dry eye in the room.

I ask you: would your children do the same? Why would they be compelled to stand or shed a tear if they did not understand what this man, this stranger, had done to defend their freedom? That responsibility falls on us as parents. Our children need to understand that they are inheriting a free nation, but preserving that freedom will require sacrifice from them, too.

The habits children learn at home go with them into homes of their own. A nation is always downstream from its families, and we have a responsibility to teach our children what they will need to pass on.

This Veterans Day, as we teach children to respect the flag, we can also help them understand their own responsibility to the country. One day, when you drive up to your grown child’s home and see an American flag flying outside, your heart will swell with joy because you will know they remembered the lessons you taught around your table.

Together with you,
Lisa Lou