What You Should Do With Your Worn-Out American Flag

My dad, who passed away 20 years ago, made his living as a funeral director and mortician. A stickler for doing EVERYTHING the exact right way, he was meticulous at his job. In every facet. If one little thing was out of place, mishandled, or just plain wrong, he would step in and fix it.

Folding an American Flag

One of his biggest pet peeves was the improper folding of an American flag. Military funerals, among others, routinely include the folding of the flag. There is a proper way to do that, and Dad was adamant that it be done that way.

Honestly, if Dad had lived long enough to see the advent of YouTube, he would have said, "Get the camera; I'll show 'em how it's done." (By the way, that comment isn't to suggest what you see in the video is incorrect, only that my dad would have wanted to add his two cents. He ALWAYS had two cents to add.)

Disposing of an American Flag

His insistence on the proper treatment of an American flag in every facet extended to how one should dispose of one that's worn out. I've seen him practically pull the car over (he never went that far, but he got close) when he'd see a tattered American flag on a pole. It would make him want to bite a nail in two--his words.

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But that's not just him; that's the U.S. Flag Code. And, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, when a flag has deteriorated into an unusable condition, the proper thing to do is burn it. That always felt weird to me, but who am I to argue with the DOD?

Flag Retirement Ceremonies

Of course, there are also flag RETIREMENT ceremonies conducted by organizations like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America; the Veterans of Foreign Wars; and the American Legion, among others. They, too, involve burning.

So there you go. I saw a question on social media about tattered flags and remembered my dad's strong stance on the matter. He could've written this himself.