Saturday, June 14, is Flag Day. It’s a day to honor the red, white and blue and the country it flies over. It happens once a year, but for me, there’s only one flag day and it happened years ago in one of the most remote places on Earth.
It was a dawn launch from USS Midway right smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean. We were sick of flying combat air patrol off the coast of Iran, but today was different. Not only were we on our way home, but for the first time in months we would see land. The flight schedule called it a low-level training flight, but to us it was like a scenic drive in the country. Yeah, maybe we’d only see uninhabited tiny atolls, but they were land, and anything was more exciting than the blue water we’d been seeing the past few months. It was just Lizard and I in one jet, Rawhide and Jabba in another — four good friends out for a joyride in two very expensive F-4 hotrods.
Halfway through the flight, we spotted a small sailboat anchored near an atoll, which piqued our interest since we were far from any shipping lanes and hadn’t seen a civilian boat in months. Nobody was up on deck, but that was to be expected at that early hour. Curiosity got the best of us and we had to have a closer look, so we circled around to do a low fly-by, rationalizing that if our noise woke them up, at least they’d get a show.
We were outclassed. Outgunned. The show they gave us far exceeded our feeble attempt. Two people came up on deck and started proudly and emphatically waving a big American flag, and we were close enough to see the smiles on their faces. I can’t speak for my buddies, but for me that sight caught me off-guard and put a lump in my throat the size of a golf ball as our flag means so much more to me than just a symbol of our country. We were almost exactly on the opposite side of the planet from our country — about as far away as you can get, and yet here in the middle of nowhere we were seeing these folks proudly displaying our flag and showing they were glad to see us as they did so.
I was overwhelmed with intense pride. I was proud to be flying one of Uncle Sam’s most lethal weapons off of one of the largest and most powerful ships in the world. I was proud to come from a family with almost continuous military service since the Revolutionary War. I was proud of my firefighter and lifeguard friends back home who chose tough jobs to keep folks safe and of my hardworking rancher and farmer relatives in the Midwest who help feed our country and much of the world. I was proud of all the teachers in my family who help educate our kids and my friends in medical professions who help keep us healthy. I felt extremely fortunate to be an American and associated with so many good people who chose professions of service for our country. It was a good day and one I’ll never forget.
So when this Saturday comes along and you look up and see that big beautiful red, white and blue, just think how lucky we are to live in the greatest country in the world. Our nation’s flight path through time has rarely been without turbulence, but it’s always preserved primarily because of one thing — the people who call that flag their own.
Koons is a former San Diego lifeguard and Naval aviator. He lives in Serra Mesa.
