A Flag Day reward for flag zealot

Most of us have our little obsessions with things that drive us nuts – pet peeves that, were we king, we’d damn well fix in a hurry, and that would be that. But since royal fiat is not an option in attempting to remedy life’s irritants, we plod along, doing the best we can with the tools we have.

Reader Dawn Fortune of Windham, for example, tells me that for years she conducted a vigilante editing campaign, carrying a red marker in her pocket to correct errant spelling and punctuation on business signs and restaurant menus. She abandoned the practice in favor of a consumer boycott of establishments that are hopelessly spelling-and-punctuation challenged.

Other readers, bothered by other things, choose other methods. Enter Mike Gleason of Bangor, a retired United States Air Force senior master sergeant with 31 years of service, veteran member of a Bangor-based military honor guard and self-proclaimed “flag zealot” whose passion is seeing that the United States flag is properly honored.

If your place of business is improperly displaying the flag, this is a man you do not want on your case, as any number of establishments in Maine, plus a few in Canada, can attest. Like a pit bull working a bone, Gleason won’t give up until the mission is accomplished. More times than he or his family cares to remember, he’s passed a flag display that violates the U.S. Flag Code, made a U-turn, hunted down the perpetrator and patiently explained how this flag thing is supposed to work.

Most people are receptive to his activist approach, although not among them is the Ellsworth lady, who, when chided about the tattered flag that fluttered above her establishment, told Gleason that if he was so all-fired up about it, he could jolly well “climb up on the (expletive deleted) roof” and change it himself.

Some quests to rectify a flag etiquette breach can drag on interminably. For years, Gleason fought The Battle Of The Eastland Hotel in Portland, trying to get that landmark establishment to correct an improper flag lineup at its main entrance, to no avail.

After Portland Press Herald columnist Bill Nemitz wrote a column about the situation, the flags were placed properly. “Resultantly, I turn to you, Old Dawg,” Gleason wrote in a recent e-mail describing a flag flap closer to home that seemed hopelessly stalemated.

The current cause celebre, Gleason wrote, involved the former Fleet bank, now Bank of America, on Bangor’s Exchange Street. He had been trying since March in extensive e-mail correspondence with corporate headquarters outside Maine to get the bank to correct its building-front flag display, but negotiations had bogged down.

Under the U.S. Flag Code adopted in 1923, Gleason explained, the U.S. flag is to be afforded the “position of honor,” meaning that it must be in the position “on its own right side.” The flag’s “own right” position would be to the viewer’s left when facing the display from outside the building. In our society, we read from left to right. Thus, in the spirit of the flag code, as a viewer “reads” a multiple flag display the first thing to strike the eye should be the U.S. flag, followed in order of importance by the others…

The Bank of America display was exactly opposite, Gleason contended, with the outside viewer “reading” corporate flag, Maine state flag, U.S. flag, left to right. The U.S. flag was thus subordinated to the others, and Mr. Flag Etiquette Guy was borderline apoplectic each time he eyed the display.

Seeking a peg on which to hang a Flag Day column, I stopped by the bank to speak with banking center manager Lisa Martin about Gleason’s complaint. The lady was most gracious and we had a pleasant conversation.

They’d had several complaints about the flag display, she acknowledged. But each complainant seemed to offer differing advice as to the correct display, and so the bank had decided to stand pat.

“We thought we were doing the right thing,” Martin explained.

“We’re patriotic. We will do whatever’s right,” she promised, after scanning Gleason’s detailed primer on the flag code. True to her word, she had the display corrected before the day was out.

One small step for the Bank of America; one giant leap for an ecstatic Mike Gleason in his mission of spreading the gospel according to the United States Flag Code. “As the French so eloquently put it, ‘Incroyable, non?'” was his morning-after reaction.

His work on Exchange Street done, our caped crusader moves on to his next mission. So much work to do. So little time.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net