Local boy scouts hope to spark patriotism for new Flag Week

Jeffery and Daniel load their mothers van to carry American flags as they try to sell them to raise funds for their troop, Friday June 11.

WELLSVILLE – Daniel and Jeffery Tarbert live in Wellsville and are members of Troop 21 of The Boy Scouts of America. For the past two years their mother has driven the boys around neighborhoods in a minivan with flags attached to plastic polls and knocked on doors trying to sell them. Their hope is the two will sell enough flags it will help pay for scout camp.

Daniel and Jeffery Tarbert display on of the flags they have for sale on Friday June 11.

“Last year we only sold a few due to COVID,” Jeffery said. “Our scoutmaster (James Hammer) puts them together and we go to different neighborhoods and try to sell them.”

“We load them in the back of our minivan,” Daniel said. “Then we take them to the door, ring the door bell and ask them if they would like to buy them. We charge $30 for them.”

Unfortunately, many families have purchased their own or are involved in a church that distributes them as part of a youth fund raising project.

After President Joe Biden signed a proclamation on Friday, June 11, calling for businesses and individuals to display the American Flag for a week instead of one day the scouts hope to sell more flags.

Biden’s proclamation is adding Flag Week to Flag Day to commemorate when Congress consecrated what would be an enduring emblem of American unity by adopting a national flag on June 14, 1777.

“Since adoption of the Stars and Stripes, Americans and people around the world have continuously looked to our flag as a symbol of unity and liberty,” the proclamation said. “Our flag has sailed around the globe, and journeyed to the moon and, now, to Mars. It has flown on fields of battle and marks the resting places of those who have given what President (Abraham) Lincoln called ‘the last full measure of devotion’ for our country.”

President Biden said we should let our flag serve as a reminder to us, and to the world, that America stands for and strives for the promise of freedom, justice, and equality for all. He is asking businesses, government institutions and individuals to display an American flag at their premises from Sunday, June 13 until Saturday, June 19.

Jeffery and Daniel Tarbert give their flag selling approach to neighbor Kaitlyn Hansen of Wellsville on Friday June 11.

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim June 14, 2021, as Flag Day, and the week starting June 13, 2021, as National Flag Week. I direct the appropriate officials to display the flag on all Federal Government buildings during this week, and I urge all Americans to observe Flag Day and National Flag Week by displaying the flag. I encourage the people of the United States to observe with pride and all due ceremony those days from Flag Day through Independence Day, set aside by the Congress (89 Stat. 211), as a time to honor the American spirit, to celebrate our history and the foundational values we strive to uphold, and to publicly recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America.

“IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eleventh day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.”

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