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As I do on most mornings, I walked to the post office recently. The U.S. flag was at half-mast, and I didn't know why. I do try to keep up on the news, and I felt certain that if some prominent person had died, I would have heard about it.
But I hadn't heard of any such event. Nor had a friend
whom I talked to a few days later. He and his wife had just
spent several days deep in Mesa Verde away from the news,
and on their drive home, we saw the flag at half-mast at
the Mancos Post Office, and then at Hesperus, too.
He
mentioned something about their groundless hopes that this
had something to do with Dick Cheney, which I passed over,
just in case some federal snoop was eavesdropping, and
asked me if I knew why the flag had been at half mast.
So I decided to find out. Since 1962, May 15 has been
Peace Officers Memorial Day,
to honor those who were
killed or injured in the line of duty, and the American
flag should be flown at half-mast then, unless it coincides
with Armed Forces Day, which is the third Saturday in May,
when it should fly at full height.
Other half-mast days are Korean War Veterans Armistice Day, July 27, and National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, Dec. 7.
I also learned that half-staff
is the proper
term. Half-mast
applies to ships, which have masts.
On land, it's half-staff.
Even though we commonly
say flag pole
rather than flag staff,
we
don't fly the flag at half-pole.
As for Memorial Day tomorrow, the flag is supposed to fly at half-staff until noon, then be raised to full-staff.
Now the deeper question: How, why, and when did this tradition of a half-staff flag as a symbol of mourning originate?
I guessed that it began as a naval practice, because
flags were used for communication at sea, and to this day
some high-ranking mariners are flag officers.
My
usual quick sources -- Encyclopedia Brittanica, the World
Almanac and Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable -- were
silent, except to note that it is a custom in many
countries, not just ours.
I trust books a lot more than I trust anything on the Internet, but there was no place else to look. I found that in 1952, probably on account of the death of King George VI, the royal office asked the British Board of Admiralty for information on the origin of the custom.
Archivist Peter Kemp responded that The earliest
record we have of lowering a flag to signify a death was an
occasion in 1612, when the Master of [the ship] 'Heart's
Ease,' William Hall, was murdered by Eskimos while taking
part in an expedition in search of the North West
Passage.
The Oxford English Dictionary cites a 1627
reference to half-mast,
but it took a while for the
tradition to form.
Kemp wrote that after the restoration of the British
monarchy in 1660, ships of the Royal Navy flew flags at
half-mast on Jan. 30 to commemorate the anniversary of the
execution of King Charles I in 1649, and it is from this
custom that, so far as we can trace, the present practice
... has evolved.
That explanation seems sensible, and the practice has evolved to include other dates. We might further this custom by adding another half-staff day: Dec. 15.
It was proclaimed Bill of Rights Day
in 1941 by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 150th anniversary of
the adoption of the first 10 amendments to the federal
constitution. They have a rather quaint and seditious sound
in these times, as in The right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated
or No person shall be ... deprived of life,
liberty, or property, without the due process of
law.
Daily I receive press releases from the ruling political party about how a majority of Americans really support the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detentions and the collection of their telephone records. If that is indeed so, then it seems only fair to hold a half-staff day to mourn the death of our Bill of Rights.
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