Showing The Flag

      To help your children understand the special meaning of our flag tell them this story about Senator John McCain’s time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.  One of his fellow prisoners was a young man named Mike Christian, who came from a small town near Selma, Alabama.   At 17, Mike enlisted in the US Navy.  He later earned a commission by going to Officer Training School. Then he became a Naval Flight Officer and was shot down and captured in 1967.
     The Vietnamese allowed prisoners to receive packages from home. In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing.  Mike made himself a bamboo needle. And then, over a couple of months, he created an American flag, using what he had been sent, and sewed it on the inside of his shirt.
     McCain told it this way, “Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance. I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I can assure you that in that stark cell it was indeed the most important and meaningful event.”
     One day, the Vietnamese guards searched the cell and discovered Mike's shirt with the flag sewn inside and confiscated this symbol of America’s freedom and one American’s courage. That evening, they returned and beat Mike Christian severely for more than two hours.
     “The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept,” McCain recalled.  “Four naked light bulbs hung in each corner of the room.  That night, I looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath a dim light bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, making another American flag.”
     “He was not making the flag because it made Mike Christian feel better. He was making that flag because he knew how important it was to us to be able to Pledge Allegiance to our flag and our country.”
     Every American child should hear Senator McCain’s story.  Ask your children to think about it the next time they say the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag.