Flag Day celebration honors local veterans

WASILLA — In a lot of ways, it was fitting that Flag Day happened to fall at the end of the The Moving Wall’s tenure in the Valley.

Speaking outside the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center at the city’s Flag Day celebration Thursday, Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright, himself a veteran of the Vietnam War whose veterans the wall memorializes, spoke about the relationship some Americans had to the flag then.

“There were some of us in our country that spat on that flag, burned it, disrespected it,” Rupright said.

But the flag was a symbol of everything people sacrificed to make America free for people “to speak, to work, to vote.”

“Anybody who tells you it’s just nothing but a rag, tell them what you think,” Rupright said. “They may have a right to say it, but without the sacrifice of many, they wouldn’t be able to say it.”

The wall bears names of American servicemen killed in Vietnam. Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss said two names on the wall belong to people he knew. Both worked on his family’s homestead. One was a champion potato picker.

He also said he remembered his days in school, saying the “Pledge of Allegiance” and adapting to the addition of the words “under God.” He remembered that in those days, no one left the flag outside at night or in bad weather.

“We really thought the country had gone to pot when those kinds of things were allowed,” DeVilbiss said.

Palmer Mayor DeLena Johnson said that the flag is special for its ability to bring Americans with different viewpoints together.

“No matter what’s happening in our country, there’s one thing that’s a symbol that we all stand for,” she said.

She also mentioned Vietnam.

“I had brothers in combat in Vietnam,” Johnson said. And though she was too young to give it much thought, “My parents thought about it. A lot.”

James Hastings, chaplain for the Palmer Elks Lodge, which put on the event, referred to the flag circa the founding of the nation as “a new constellation (that) appeared in the western skies.”

It represented “the worldwide hope of all who under God would be free to do his will.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.