Article & Photos by Cheri Tishman
Flag Day is celebrated June 14. It is a day to commemorate the birth of our flag and also to remind ourselves to the ideals for which the Flag stands. Local Ft. Lauderdale York Rite Melita Commandery #35 along with the City of Margate officials and many other 26th Masonic District Brothers and their spouses participated in a Flag Folding Ceremony at Margate’s Veterans Park. As the members of the York Rite folded the flag, Recorder Garry Paxinos read the Flag Folding Lecture fold by fold, which was created by National Sojourners:
Fold 1: The 13 stripes represent the original 13 states: Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia .
Fold 2: The 50 stars represent our 50 States of the United States America.
Fold 3: “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.” Patrick Henry
Fold 4: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Thomas Paine
Fold 5: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Declaration of Independence
Fold 6: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.” Preamble to United States Constitution
Fold 7: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” First Amendment
Fold 8: “The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.” George Washington 602 July 2010
Fold 9: “My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!” Thomas Jefferson
Fold 10: “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Abraham Lincoln
Fold 11: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” Emma Lazarus, inscription on the Statue of Liberty
Fold 12: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Fold 13: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Please mark your calendars for next years’ Flag Day ceremony and join in on this commemorative event.
