DATE: Sunday, June 22, 1997                 TAG: 9706200329

SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER      PAGE: 02   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: RANDOM RAMBLES 

SOURCE: Tony Stein 

                                            LENGTH:   73 lines

4TH OF JULY REMINDS US OF OUR FREEDOMS - EVEN TO BE DUMB

Gordon Jones was a retired Army colonel who ran the Great Bridge Book Store until he lost a battle with cancer a few years ago. I remember him fondly as a man with a professorial exterior layered over warmth and friendliness.

Granted, his reserved sense of humor made him sometimes cringe at my love of bad puns, but I like to think he enjoyed my visits to the store as much as I did. It was a special pleasure for me when he talked about his boyhood in Kansas. He was a youngster when Civil War veterans still marched sturdily in Fourth of July parades and told again and again their battle stories.

Gordon still sounded proud when he recalled how, on one of those old-time Fourths, he was a Boy Scout privileged to recite the Gettysburg Address for a gathered crowd. Wonderful memory of a wonderful time and a wonderful spirit.

And that memory is a good reason why I'm glad to see the continuance of what is a great Chesapeake tradition - the annual South Norfolk Fourth of July picnic at Lakeside Park. I've been to a couple, and they have been marvelous fun in happy tones of red, white and blue.

I'm a flag-waver. I mean, the American flag snapped out to full length in a billowing breeze sends chills down my back. Never more so than at an Oyster Bowl game back in 1958. As the band had just finished playing the national anthem at the start of the game, a gust of wind raised the stadium flag from limpness on its pole to full-out glory. It was an unforgettable image.

A close second was the day that the aircraft carrier Nimitz was commissioned. The day was hazy, but the ship was a bright mass of flags and uniforms. Then, at the same moment, the sun broke through the clouds and a Navy band began playing ``This Is My Country.'' Hollywood couldn't have done it more dramatically.

But as I write this, the national anthem is a sore subject with me. I recently heard a version of the anthem that grated on my nerves like a sandpaper massage. It was one of those versions where the performer stylizes the anthem as if it were a popular song. Swoop, dip and shriek so that the performance becomes more important than the music. That's why I hate it when television events lilke football games trot out ``stars'' to provide the anthem.

The singers and the instrumentalists usually decide that their personal style is more meaningful than the dignity and the depth of The Star Spangled Banner. Or else they are popular singers whose voices are totally inadequate,

OK, I'm an old fogey, but I think there ought to be authorized versions of the anthem performed at public events. This is the way you sing it. This is the way you play it. Yes, it sounds mean, but I wonder if there's any other country that allows its anthem to be treated as an individual whim.

Actually, I'm a sucker for the anthem verse that goes ``Thus be it ever when free men shall stand between their loved homes and the war's desolation.'' That never gets sung but it says to me one of the important things about the Fourth of July we're nearing.

What I mean is the remembrance that through our history free men have bene willing to take up arms to protect that freedom. All of which brings me to another point . . .

There is a current drive to pass a constitutional amendment to outlaw flag-burning as a means of protest. That brings to mind an article I once read.

It was written by a man who had been an American officer captured by North Vietnam. He had been a prisoner of war for several years. When the anti-war protests in this country were filling the streets with demonstrations, one of his North Vietnamese captors called him out.

``Look at this picture,'' said the North Vietnamese officer.

``It shows people burning an American flag. Doesn't that make you feel that you are fighting for an unworthy cause?''

The American officer's answer rings in my mind. No, he said. On the contrary, the picture illustrated for him the very freedom he was defending. It showed him that the right to protest, even to the disgraceful limit of burning a flag, was still alive in America. The picture did not depress him. It added to his already considerable strength and courage.

What that American hero said and how he felt are worth holding in our hearts and minds before there is any political rush to judgment.

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