Nine-year-old Kayla Becker knows the Pledge of Allegiance by heart. She says it once a week at school. She can’t sing the national anthem from memory, but when she drew the picture of the American flag that won a $25 gift certificate to Toys “R” Us, she knew the 13 stripes stood for the 13 colonies, and the 50 stars for the 50 states.
“I just don’t know about the red, white and blue,” she says. “I don’t know why they picked those colors.”
Kayla lives with her grandparents in a Gulfport condominium. Michael Baggs, her grandfather, served with the Marines. On the back of one of their cars is a ribbon-shaped sticker that reads, “Freedom is Not Free.”
Kayla was too young to remember much about Sept. 11, 200l. She doesn’t know where she was that day or why that should matter. Her generation will be touched by that day in ways that can’t yet be known. No one can say whether Kayla will adopt the same political skepticism that has touched every generation since Vietnam, or grow up into the new wave of patriotism still surging from the rubble of the nation’s most recent shared tragedy.
Gulfport veterans say things have changed since they were kids, many of them growing up in the proud years after World War II, many of them saying the Pledge of Allegiance every day. It all depends on how kids are raised — both by their parents and their country.
Clarence Nelson, quartermaster at Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10174, remembers when John F. Kennedy Jr. saluted his father’s flag-draped coffin as it passed by.
“And it just sends goose pimples up my arm,” he says. “Look at this little kid, you can tell the way he was raised. … They’re not raised that way today.”
Patriotism seems to come and go with national moods, victories and defeats. These veterans say it’s important because it brings all Americans together. And the symbol of that unity is the flag.
“It’s one of the strongest unities you can have, is the American flag,” says Tommy Teal, 62, commander of the VFW post and a Vietnam veteran.
Maybe that kind of unity really can be taught. Or maybe it only comes with national circumstance. Andy Anderson American Legion Post 125 Cmdr. Don Phipps, 65, firmly believes it starts at home. His grandkids, Elizabeth, 12, Emily, 7, and Josh, 6, visit the legion regularly. They know to salute the flag around grandpa. He would like to see every parent teach the same.
“And I’m sure that they would grow up to be better citizens, because it’s under that flag, that’s the reason we have the freedom to be here today,” he says.
The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, gave more relevance to his cause. “United We Stand” gave it a motto.
Nelson, too, is making sure his grandkids — all 11 of them — respect the flag and the country, no matter what happens in the rest of the country.
When Nelson’s 3-year-old granddaughter Stalicia bumped into the china cabinet on Sunday, sending a small American flag to the floor, she knew Grandpa was not going to like it.
“And she said, ‘Uh-oh!’ like she knows it’s not supposed to fall on the floor,” he says. Nelson picked up the flag, wiped it off, and put it back in its place.
He didn’t get mad, he says.
“But she knows ‘the look.'”
