In a summer marred by urban insurrections and variously excessive and unconstitutional, official pandemic fears and dicta, community service clubs, pillars of society, all, “Zoom” notwithstanding, continue their often unheralded works raising money to give away, along with countless hours of volunteer time.  So it is with chapters of the Exchange Clubs of America who “Exchange our Service today to build stronger communities and a better Nation tomorrow.”  This concept would be moribund if Exchange (and Rotary, Kiwanis and others) did not believe in the likelihood of stronger communities and a better Nation tomorrow.  In fact, service clubs’ heartfelt faith in America’s striving for a more perfect Union – and Unity – is so directly opposite, and in opposition to the sea of hatreds that some stoke for anti-American ideologies, that the distinctions are quite sharp in the Summer of 2020.

Exchange in the lower Merrimack River Valley of northeastern Massachusetts is one of those chapters: the Exchange Club of Lawrence and the Andovers, sponsored in 1947 by the Exchange Club of Lowell, Mass., 8 miles up the river, just a few months after the Exchange Club of Haverhill was chartered, 8 miles down the river from Lawrence.  Many Clubs were formed or grew significantly right after World War Two, as Americans returned from battles in terrible places and conditions to recognize how great the promise and premise of the United States of America truly were then and, Exchange members believe, still are today.  Americanism is one of the 4 pillars of Service that define Exchange Clubs of America.

Following the September 11^th attacks in 2001, a flag company, at the urging of Exchange members in Sandy, Utah, created the first “Healing Field” of nearly 3,000 flags for those killed in the 9-11 attacks.  The idea became a National Exchange project and over the past 20 years has been a focus for 9-11 and for other events that cry out for attention and memory across the country, promoted by various Exchange Clubs and by many other organizations. 

Despite Covid-19 shutdowns and restrictions, the Town of North Andover, where Exchange did its first local “Field of Honor” in 2019, encouraged us to do a Field in 2020, as well, although without a closing, crowd-attracting ceremony on the Common where 500 flags were displayed.  Local access TV created a video of the many parts of the ceremony that we would have done, and created a You-Tube video for anyone to watch:

The value of the Field of Honor is not mere patriotism, as essential as patriotism certainly is, it is a set of focused remembrances.  Whether “In Memory Of” or “In Honor Of,” the person(s) to whom a flag is dedicated is an important part of who the flag sponsor is, now, today.  The first time our Club installed a “Field of Honor,” we were not ready for the importance  to our “customers” of this simple act of stating – printing out for all to see – the name and “heroic” worth  of their relatives, antecedent or descendant, or even of great, somewhat sacrificial friends, even acquaintances.  In every case, the honoree associated with each flag is important to the flag sponsor and the fact that he or she or they remember  or take note of the honoree and are in some way affirmed  in their own lives by the excellence, value  or sacrifice of the honoree.  It is intensely important that their own lives are acknowledged through the best connections that comprise them.  It’s spiritual.

Every flag is about love and many about the deepest love: respect.  Each tells a story about the sponsor and about the honoree, living or passed.  The Field of Honor is merely a focus for manifested love and remembrance, but oh, so crucial – something the club was not prepared for the first time we installed a Field in 2019.  Even more, we were not prepared for the importance of reading, saying, the dedications out loud.  Spiritual.

For the Town of North Andover and for Andover and Lawrence as well, the Field created a statement of normalcy against a backdrop of Marxist anti-American hatred in the spring and Summer of 2020.  There it was okay to be patriotic, okay to recognize goodness and honor and duty.  There were so many outpourings of gratitude to the Club  when the gratitude belonged to the flag sponsors… at least as the Club members saw it.  Yet there they were, steadily, thanking us  for erecting the Field.  Humbling, spiritual.

For those who don’t share the views of rioters and insurrectionists, the Field is a comfort.  It’s presence is an affirmation of America, of the Constitution, of what we hold dear in our families, and of what we hold dear in our faiths.  The American flag, itself, is simple, by itself… no more complex than any other national flag, and we display it and hundreds of others very simply.  A cheap PVC pipe is the flag-pole, slid over a short piece of steel rebar we try to pound vertically, we hope, into the soil.  Tie-wraps hold the flag in place through holes we drill through the pipe, and a cheap golden bulb is stretched – coaxed – over the top.  The flag is a printed one of decent quality, metal grommets and sewn edging.  We tell sponsors that it will last eleven months and two weeks.

But for patriots the flag is a history, a heritage, a dream and a promise.  Those who dedicate one to an Honoree of their choice, feel all of these aspects of this amazing symbol and yet more – things they can’t put into words.  As we install them, straighten them, put dedication tags on them, and straighten them again, we feel those things, too.  Together, we not only feel that history and heritage, and hear those dreams and promises, we make them, anew.

At the beginning of our You Tube video our senior member, a virtual pillar of these communities – his children following his example – recites a somewhat famous, somewhat poetic statement entitled, “I Am The Flag,” by Howard Schnauber:

I am the flag of the United States of America.

My name is Old Glory.
I fly atop the world’s tallest buildings.
I stand watch in America’s halls of justice.
I fly majestically over institutions of learning.
I stand guard with power in the world.
Look up and see me.

I stand for peace, honor, truth and justice.
I stand for freedom. I am confident.
I am arrogant. I am proud.
When I am flown with my fellow banners,
My head is a little higher,
My colors a little truer.
I bow to no one!
I am recognized all over the world.
I am worshipped – I am saluted.
I am loved – I am revered.
I am respected – I am feared.

I have fought in every battle of every war for more than 200 years.
I was flown at Valley Forge, Gettysburg, Shiloh and Appamatox.
I was there at San Juan Hill, the trenches of France, in the Argonne Forest, Anzio, Rome and the beaches of Normandy.
Guam, Okinawa, Korea, KheSan and Saigon, Vietnam know me.
I was there. I led my troops.
I was dirty, battle-worn and tired,
but my soldiers cheered me and I was proud.

I have been burned, torn and trampled on the streets of countries
I have helped set free. It does not hurt for I am invincible.
I have been soiled upon, burned, torn and trampled in the streets of my country.
And when it’s done by those whom I’ve served in battle – it hurts.
But I shall overcome – for I am strong.
I have slipped the bonds of earth and
stood watch over the uncharted frontiers of space from my vantage point on the moon.
I have born silent witness to all of America’s finest hours.
But my finest hours are yet to come.
When I am torn into strips and used as bandages for my wounded comrades on the battle field,
when I am flown at half mast to honor my soldiers,
or when I lie in the trembling arms of a grieving parent at the grave of their fallen son or daughter,

I am proud.
I am the flag of the United States of America.

Al Torrisi is a natural leader and a forceful speaker at any time.  Yet his voice has a stronger, more commanding timbre (good for the 50-year owner of a large lumber company) than at other times when he recites these words.  Years of patriotism, loyalty and love of country spill forth as he speaks, infecting and affecting his listeners.  Truth is the most spiritual statement of all.  It is the truth of America and of every flag sponsor and honoree, and of the Field, itself.

As this is written the Exchange Club of Needham, Mass. has experienced vandalism of its Field of Honor with some 30 flags being burned.  The empty, sinking feeling a fellow Exchangite and field of Honor afficianado feels is hard to articulate.  Clearly the membrane of civilization is thin and easily sundered for those who cannot judge the presence of hatred for their own country that such an act exposes.  For shame.