Having found myself with a full-sized flagpole with cord and pulley, I decided to fly at half-staff, when appropriate. This summer has kept me busy with lowering and raising the flag. Aurora Co., Oak Creek, Neil Armstrong, Patriots Day, The Embassy, etc. How usual is the current frequency for Half-Staff? Would we be looking at as many half-staff proclamations by the President 10 years ago? 20? 50?
I’m beginning to think that advances in instantaneous communication have something to do with it. By the time every Post Office in the country was contacted in 1950 or 1990, the occasion would have passed. But now there are the obvious ways to make sure the postmaster knows how to fly the flag before they even walk out the door to hoist it for the day. Whoever is sitting in the Oval Office and their perogative at the time would be another factor.
If anyone can remember the rash of school shootings in the 90s, did half-staff orders go out by the President? It seems as if they happened today, we’d be at half-staff tomorrow, but 15 years ago, I don’t know if I don’t remember, or if I wasn’t paying attention. The only time I can recall half-staff orders going out was for the usuals, such as Pearl Harbor day or when a President or other dignitary passed, but can never remember them being issued in response to tragedies such as Aurora or Oak Creek.
Anyone have memories to share?
From time to time, I see flags at half-staff (lately, seems like just about all the time), and I often don’t know why they are, and I always get curious. Sometimes I stop and ask – whether it’s at the Post Office or the local McDonald’s or any place else.
The United States flag is apparently flown at half-staff for various special-purpose or local occasions too. For example, when a few firefighters got incinerated during those huge wild fires this past summer, all the fire stations had their flags at half-staff.
And once, not long ago, I saw some flags at half-staff. I happened to stumble upon a street festival in a neighboring city (in a neighboring county even), and asked a cop who was doing security there – story was, there was a shoot-out in town (here, not where the festival was) and a cop got killed. So there were a lot of flags lowered in this region, just for that.
A few years back, I saw some flags at half-staff, so I turned on the radio to see if there was some news. I found out that the space shuttle Columbia had just self-destructed.
ETA: ISTM even some big private corporations will fly their American flags at half-staff if some corporate big-wig dies. IIRC, McDonald’s everywhere flew their flags lowered when Ray Kroc died.
Yes, a state governor can order the flags to half-staff in their particular state, and I suppose mayors or fire chiefs also take it upon themselves to do the same. A flag at a corporate building is private property, and if they wanted to fly it upside down and at half-staff, nothing would stop them except it would be bad for business. What I was asking concerned the President issuing an official proclamation ordering them to half-staff, has it been more common in the past decade than in other decades?
And if you see a flag at half-staff at a government building, the site www.halfstaff.org will have an explanation for the proclamation. They also send out email reminders to those on the list if you’d like to be informed of half-staff status.
Assuming you are also into observing the rest of the Flag Code, unless there are floodlights, you should be busy with the flag anyways, as it has to be lowered and removed before dark every day.
Bonus points if you cover it from rain, but I don’t think that’s a requirement.
When raising the American Flag at Half-Saff, it is run up to full height quickly and then lowered slowly to the halfway point; upon retiring, it is quickly run up to full height and slowly lowered to where it can be recovered.
I don’t know if lowering the flag to half-staff was any more frequent today as in the past, but certainly communication wasn’t any less instantaneous in 1990 or even 1950. We had the same means of getting information from coast to coast, telephone, TV, and radio. Even more so in 1990, when satellite transmission and networks such as CNN were in everyday use. As soon as the President or on a state level, a governor issued a proclamation, people would have known about it within minutes.
Yeah, one of the local fire departments in my area seems to have their flag at half staff about 50% of the time. I’ll drive by and think, “what in the world has happened now?” None of the flags on federal or state buildings will be lowered. I feel the practice should be reserved for something noteworthy, not lowered every time the fire chief suffers constipation.
The only explanation I can come up with to explain the frequency of half staff at this particular station is perhaps they lower it for the day whenever a soldier gets killed.
On Memorial Day, the flag is to be flown at half-mast until noon, and then at full mast the rest of the day.
Twenty years ago the death of an astronaut might not have called for flags at half staff because people would see it on the morning news and go about their day, as opposed to seeing it on Twitter and Facebook and so forth to the point where someone not acknowledging it at all comes to seem callous.
I also wonder if someone hears about it on the radio and, unfamiliar with the Flag Code, lowers a flag to half staff, other people see itand assume they should too, and so on, even without a proclamation.
I think communications are absolutely more instantaneous. If a postmaster was supposed to fly at half-mast on a day in 1966 for the Charles Whitman tower shooting, how would he learn of the proclamation in order to lower the flag in a timely manner? No email, no text message, I assume someone would have to telephone the office, and I don’t know who would spend their time telephoning every post office and other gov’t building in order for them to comply. Now mass emails or texts could be sent to inform millions at once, with virtually no effort and little time spent by the sender. For a president, such news would be plastered on the front of every newspaper, and a postmaster could assume to be looking for a half-staff order, whereas they wouldn’t necessarily expect one for a regional tragedy involving the death of civilians, therefore if a half-staff order was issued, very little compliance could be expected in a timely manner.
Wisconsin and Colorado may have been regional tragedies, but the flags didn’t go to half-staff in only those states, they were ordered down nationally. I don’t think that would have happened in the last century as often as it does now.
This is IMHO, so anecdata ahead:
We’ve been lowering ours (library) like a mofo this past year, and we don’t even do half the times that the local bank down the street has theirs down. We lower for major national tragedies and for day observances (we have a navy retiree on staff, so he takes care of raising and lowering it, but with 5 Eagle Scouts in my immediate family/friend group, I think I’d get lynched if I didn’t know how and when to do it properly myself) but the local people do it for every single little thing - traffic accident and someone dies? The flags are down. Police officer dies (not in the line of duty) flags are down.
Not to make light of traffic accidents with fatalities, or of well-regarded service people who die of old age, but I do think that it cheapens the gesture to use it all the damn time for everything.
BTW - Most flags now are made from weatherproof materials, so do NOT have to be taken in out of the rain (unless they’re not weatherproof, then you still have to). According to our Navy guy, taking it in prior to massive storms is still good form, and also means we replace it less often because it doesn’t get as tattered by the wind.
Don’t have time to look it up right now, but aren’t you supposed to refrain from flying it in bad weather, but if bad weather occurs while you are flying it, you’re not supposed to take it down because it would be like retreating in the face of adversity?
I agree with you Lasciel, that’s my line of thinking with this question, the gesture is cheapened by flying it all the time. That’s part of it, I’m wondering if Bush the Second and Obama are playing up to patriotism and such by ordering the flag down (seemingly) more often than in past decades.
Not sure about the storms thing - we always get ours down prior to, because we have one of those never-sufficiently-damned weather alert radios that tells us (loudly and repeatedly) everytime the sky pisses gently in a three-state radius.