LYNN — Members of the Capt. William. G. Shoemaker Post 345 American Legion have been working on a new project to properly dispose of retired American flags.
For years, the post has collected retired flags and burned them during a Flag Day ceremony at Pine Grove cemetery, and usually has the Department of Public Works dispose of the ashes.
Post member Jack Marino read an article in the February issue of the American Legion Magazine about a legion post in Alabama that came up with the idea to create a final resting place for the ashes from their burned flags – in a steel vault placed on a mountaintop lookout.
“They were faced with the same predicament. They’ve done the same thing by retiring the flags by burning but then just throwing the ashes away,” Marino said. “They (the Alabama post) didn’t like disposing of the ashes like trash and thought they should be disposed of in an honorable way.”
Marino said he thought this was a great idea, so he shared it with the other post members, who loved it and got to work on it right away.
Marino thought putting this together would take a while and that it wouldn’t be ready for Flag Day this year, but the process took off and the memorial will be ready for the June 11 ceremony prior to Flag Day.
Member David Solimine suggested an area at the Korean Vietnam section of the cemetery, which already has a monument, to host the ashes.
After receiving permission to use this site from the Pine Grove Cemetery Commission, the post worked to put their own memorial there to hold the ashes.
The post was ready to fundraise to implement this project, but everything ended up being donated.
The vault for the ashes was donated, and Woodlawn Memorials Inc. in Everett donated its inscription, which says “all gave some, some gave all.”
“Everything we were prepared to raise money to purchase was donated, and you can feel the sense of pride of these people donating and how they want to participate and be included,” Marino said.
Marino encourages people to bring flags they want to retire to any firehouse in the city so the post can collect them to burn during the ceremony. They can also bring the flags to the Pine Grove Cemetery on June 11. The ceremony will take place at 10 a.m. There will be a ceremony for the 247th birthday of the U.S. Army and then another for the burning of the flags, followed by a procession to put the ashes into the vault.
“We retire the ashes with honesty and respect and I am very proud to say that we will be the second in the country to do this,” Marino said. “We want to educate people, mostly younger people, about the flag and how to respect it because it seems that over the past generations, how to respect and display the flag has gotten lost.”
Marino said he is going to submit a write-up of this project to the same magazine he learned about it from with hopes of this snowballing and other posts implementing it too.
“I feel very proud that we are doing this and I’m very excited that the city has welcomed the whole idea,” Marino said. “We are definitely going to include this each year during our Flag Day celebration.”
