In 1987, I was a guest speaker during a monthly Kiwanis Club luncheon in Lansing, Mich. As business editor of the Lansing State Journal, I was asked to share my thoughts on the economic turnaround effort in recession-torn Michigan. Upon completing my remarks, I was presented with an American flag that had briefly flown over the U.S. Capitol. I told the crowd that it was among the coolest gifts I had ever received.
I still feel that way almost a quarter century later.
I fly it outside my home on national holidays—and on special days.
My flag was up the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001.
I took it with me to Busch Stadium a few days later when Major League Baseball resumed after a brief hiatus in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. At 3-by-6 feet, it flapped in the wind as Jack Buck read his inspirational poem.
Many people had flags that evening; I was proud to have one of the largest in the stadium.
As the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, I must admit that I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about Osama Bin Laden. I, like most Americans, still wanted him captured or killed. I guess I didn’t realize how much emotion he still stirred in my soul until about 10 p.m. Sunday.
A good friend, Earl Austin Jr., rang my cell phone at almost the same instant that I read the “Breaking News” scroll across the bottom of the screen on ESPN during the New York Mets vs. Philadelphia Phillies game. His words: “He got his man.”
Austin was speaking of President Obama. Within the hour, Obama would tell the nation that Bin Laden was dead, killed in a firefight at a compound in Pakistan. No Americans were killed. It took almost a decade, but the day came that Bin Laden paid for his mass murders.
It was not a tearful evening, but I was moved by the respective crowds outside the White House, at Ground Zero in Manhattan, and in Philadelphia’s Citizen’s Bank Park shouting “U-S-A, U-S-A.”
A light rain was falling at 11 p.m., as I walked to my garage, grabbed our ladder, and prepared to hang my flag. The all-weather material, lit by our front-porch light, shown through on this late Sunday evening.
I wasn’t celebrating the death of one man. It was my way of remembering those killed on that horrible morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
The flag came down at dusk on Monday. Terrorism is still with us, even if one of its international leaders is not.
Hopefully, I’ll never have to fly it again as I did on 9/11. But if I do, I’ll be ready and so will my flag.
Commentary by Alvin Reid
