Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

To the Editor:

The politicians want the USA to become “more unified.” That all sounds all well and good but we really need to work harder on this if that is what the population wants for sure. A few weeks ago I was out traveling with another person through downtown Farmville and something caught my eye which just lead me to go further and check all. Let’s talk about the U.S. Flag Code. Title 4 Chapter 1 which was adopted by the National Flag Conference on 6/15/1923. “When a patriotic effect is desired, the U.S. Flag may be displayed 24 hours a day if properly illuminated during the hours of darkness.” Well so I drove all over the Town and took note of the businesses, government, state and or town buildings that had a U.S. Flag displayed after dark. Now this was at 7 p.m. in December. Without naming names (to protect those that think they are innocent) the statics are 25 places had Flags displayed in the darkness. Of that 14 had no illumination on them. Now a few had lights on the ground but the light did not illuminate the flag at all. Most of these 14 had no lights at all. Now there were 3 places that had lights that they tried to get on the Flag but the light only illuminated on the pole the flag was still in the darkness. There were 3 more places that had lights but they were so dim you could barely see the flag and yes there were actually 5 places that had lights illuminating the flag. Now some would probably argue the definition of what “properly illuminated” means but I would say the veterans in this area would say those flags were not properly illuminated. I was shocked when I saw that a local veteran associated building had no light on the flag at all. One business was using the lights of their parking lot to illuminate the flag but is that “properly illuminated”? Now I am not a Veteran but both of my brothers, my father and mother and my uncles on my mother’s side were all Veterans so it does strike a nerve with me. Maybe if the town was to set a definition to what properly illuminated was for the U.S. Flag flown after dark then these businesses, government or town buildings would comply or have them not flown after dark. Sounds like a start to me to getting the public to see that there is a start of unity amongst this town. Just my 3 cents.

Robert “Bob” Lawman

Farmville