Flag Day

In North Coventry Township, Humphrys Flag Co. of Pottstown unfurled the world's biggest flag on Sunday, Flag Day. Thomas "Ski" Demsky of Long Beach, Calif., ordered the "Superflag," specifying that it be American-made. He plans to tour the country with it.

In the Vietnam War, 58,022 U.S. soldiers were killed, taken prisoner or listed as missing in action. Yesterday, Delaware Valley Vietnam Veterans honored those soldiers on Flag Day with a flag for each soldier - 58,022 one- foot flags. Volunteers planted the flags - some red, white and blue American flags, others plain black to designate those still missing in action - into the hard, clay soil at Mill Creek Valley Park at Silver Lake, near Bristol in Bucks County. They followed the same dimensions - a 500-foot-long wedge - as the Vietnam Memorial in Washington.

On the American flag's 219th birthday, Amber Wright, 9, watches festivities at Independence National Historical Park. Wright, of Monroe, Wis., and others in the crowd got a chance to sink their teeth into something else red, white and blue yesterday - a giant cake depicting the 50-star version of the flag.

Flag Day is a big day for Philadelphia flag makers. It's big enough that they build their year around it. It's the causative factor for the biggest bulge in their production schedules. Because Philadelphia is considered the flag capital of the nation, that makes June 14 a very important day. But not so for the other half of the industry, the flagpole makers and the steeplejacks who maintain the poles. You can take Memorial Day, Flag Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day, lump them all together, and they won't generate nearly as much flag business as the fall reopening of school, according to Frank Atkinson Jr. Atkinson, who at 60 bills himself as the country's oldest steeplejack, said his busy season started about Sept.

As U.S. Rep. Dick Schulze unfolded the crisp, clean United States flags, he commended the Smith and Authier families of the Main Line for their strength and courage during Operation Desert Storm, in which their loved ones served. "The families usually give up more than those (who serve)," said Schulze, a Republican who represents the Fifth District. "So we thought it would be appropriate to give each of those families a flag. " Both flags had flown over the Capitol in Washington and were presented to the families Friday at Schulze's Paoli office as a symbol of patriotic appreciation.

For 16-year-old Andrew Kerr, Flag Day is almost bigger than Christmas. That's the time of year he heads to Yeadon with his family and his mellophone - an instrument similar to the French horn - to pay tribute not only to the Stars and Stripes but to the man credited with founding the national holiday. His great-grandfather, William T. Kerr. Kerr, who resided in Yeadon most of his life, led a 60-year campaign to make Flag Day a national holiday. In 1949, his efforts finally paid off when President Harry S. Truman signed the bill into law with Kerr at his side.

MY WIFE bought a new American flag. It looks so sharp flying above the front porch, sandwiched between the dogwood and red maple, with a giant evergreen in the background. Our old flag had seen better days, flip-flopping in the wind and becoming torn, tattered and tangled on the porch pole. This new flag means more to me than a new car because of what it represents. You can't buy courage and bravery, hope and purity, reverence to God, loyalty, justice, power and ambition.

Generally, you left scratching your head. Sometimes the calls seemed wrong. Others, the plays were not so bright. Unquestionably, the whistles and flags flew yesterday with an alarming frequency. The Eagles incurred 12 penalties for 115 yards, by far the most penalties and yards suffered since Andy Reid became head coach last season. It is the most penalties and yards since they took 15 for 140 in Arizona on Nov. 2, 1997. Like that frustrating day in Tempe, they were not happy about the calls in Green Bay. "It was ridiculous," said free safety Brian Dawkins, who was flagged for defensive holding when, he said, he was nowhere near the play.

Plenty of red, white and blue decorated the streets of Yeadon on Saturday as residents celebrated Flag Day with a parade, games and fireworks. Yeadon was the home of William T. Kerr, the founder of Flag Day, which was first celebrated in 1916, and for residents, Flag Day has the same significance as Independence Day. The actual holiday was yesterday, but the celebration traditionally is held on the Saturday before the holiday. The holiday marks the adoption of the Revolutionary flag by the Continental Congress in 1777.

Under the whir of eight metallic Singer sewing machines, Kathy Keeley meticulously put needle to nylon and began to stitch a 50th one-foot-wide star on the blue fabric. Though she spends almost 60 hours a week at the Humphrys Flag Co. factory in Pottstown, Montgomery County, Keeley finds the work still piling up for herself and a dozen other seamstresses. At Humphrys, a Philadelphia-based manufacturer that sends custom flags all over the world, orders of American flags are on the rise.

TIM O'CONNOR WAS a merchant mariner pondering a career change when a warning from his prospective mother-in-law - "You're not marrying my daughter if you continue to go to sea!" - made up his mind. "I was ready to quit anyway. I got tired of it," O'Connor said. "An old salt told me, when every port starts to look the same it's time to quit. And that was happening. " So he bought a flag company. He knew a bit about flags from sailing, like which to fly when and how to stitch repairs.

Freeman's, which last spring sold a dozen banners from the Richard Dietrich collection for a total of $784,000, is rallying around the flag again. At its fall Pennsylvania sale on Nov. 14 at the Center City gallery, it will offer a rare Revolutionary War battle flag that has been in the same family for more than 200 years. Given that it is expected to sell for $400,000 to $600,000, Freeman's was eager to announce the sale early — on June 14, Flag Day. The flag was that of the Eighth Virginia Regiment, commanded during the war by Col. Peter Muhlenberg (1746-1807)

In the pantheon of holidays, Flag Day doesn't usually register much more than a stitch in the fabric of everyday. No sequined parades or beer-drenched cookouts, no fireworks, no gift-giving, and definitely no day off. But this year, when June 14 rolled around, the "flag ladies" at the Defense Logistics Agency in Northeast Philadelphia found themselves, briefly, the focus of media attention on the one day dedicated to their craft. The public relations department of the agency decided it was time to let the public know that for more than 150 years the nation's official flags have been embroidered, sewn, and befringed right here.

Every year, on a holiday set aside to honor the U.S. flag, Old Glory is set on fire. It happens in Flag Day ceremonies organized by veterans, scout troops, and municipal governments. Flames are the ultimate honor, according to the U.S. Code, for flags that are tattered and worn. So on Thursday, at a municipal park in Northampton Township, Bucks County, and in other places across the country, old flags that have faded with time or been whipped by the wind will be retired — placed in a pit and burned.

COUNCILWOMAN Marian Tasco gave me a call last week. It was the day after she "retired" for a day, thereby pocketing the cool lump sum of $478,057 thanks to the DROP program. She thought our treatment of her windfall was racist; we'd superimposed her face on a seemingly rich lady's body, outside a Prada store and next to a Bentley (right). Register of Wills Ron Donatucci had also gotten a DROP payout, but we hadn't mentioned him. In other words, we went after the black lady and not the white guy. I told her that she'd have a point if our rabidly anti-DROP columnist Stu Bykofsky hadn't already treated Franny Rizzo and Frank DiCicco with the same level of outrage as we were now treating her. Those white males received the same ire we sent her way because, as lawmakers, they ought to be held to higher ethical standards than, say, a row-office holder.

A HIGHLIGHT of Marilyn Patsy Wells' life was getting to shake Barack Obama's hand when he made a campaign stop in Vernon Park, in Germantown, in 2008. One reason for the thrill was that Marilyn had been a longtime crusader for civil rights, and a black man running for president was more than she could have dreamed of. And after he was elected, she made sure to attend his inauguration. Marilyn Wells, a real-estate broker, a dedicated churchwoman who worked with the late Rev. Leon H. Sullivan at Zion Baptist Church, and a community and civil-rights activist, died of a heart attack Aug. 10. She was 74 and lived in West Mount Airy.

On this date in 1777, the Second Continental Congress, sitting in Philadelphia, adopted the Stars and Stripes as the flag of the new United States of America. The date went unobserved until the 19th Century, and even then it was spotty. In Philadelphia, at the urging of the Pennsylvania Society of Sons of the Revolution, then-Schools Superintendent Edward Brooks organized an observance at Independence Square in 1893. "School children were assembled, each carrying a small Flag, and patriotic songs were sung and addresses delivered," according to usflag.org In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation declaring June 14 National Flag Day and Congress made it official in 1949 with an act that President Harry Truman signed into law.

In the Fox crime procedural Bones , the principals are often seen repairing to a Washington tavern called the Founding Fathers. This always gives me a chuckle because, although several of the Founding Fathers eventually found their way to Washington, they did all their founding in Philadelphia. Flag Day, which is today, is fairly obscure as a holiday, but it's an important anniversary for the nation and the city. It was the birthday of the American flag, in 1777, and the U.S. Army, in 1775.

DEAR ABBY: I was criticized recently for placing my right hand over my heart while the flag was flown and "The Star-Spangled Banner" was being sung. I was told that the hand over the heart is for the Pledge of Allegiance only, when the flag is present. Is that true, and what is the proper procedure? - St. Louis Patriot DEAR PATRIOT: No, it is not true. Whoever criticized you was ignorant of the Flag Code, as amended by the 94th Congress and approved July 7, 1976. According to the code, "During the rendition of the national anthem when the flag is displayed, all present . . . shall stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart.

Eminem and Royce da 5'9" are back recording together more than a decade after they first joined forces. The pair, who met in Detroit in 1997 and worked together under the name Bad Meets Evil , announced yesterday that they're coming out with an EP of new material due to drop June 14. The perfect gift for Flag Day. One of the songs they recorded in the late 1990s, called "Bad Meets Evil," appeared on Eminem's major- label...