Americanism: The Pledge of Allegiance

Mary Stroud
2015-2016 National Americanism Ambassador

The school year is rapidly approaching and now is a great time to contact your schools and teachers. Need some ideas on how to get your local school and teachers involved? Not sure what resources are available to you? Check out a few ideas listed below

• Set up a day in the classrooms of the younger students to have them recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
• You can reward them by printing off the Pledge bookmarks that are on the Auxiliary website.
• Also available on the website is a great Flag Education for Kids flyer that can be handed out.
• Through the VFW Store, you can purchase the Young American Award for learning the Pledge and a neat little coloring book titled "I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag."
• Teach them the meaning behind the 13 folds of the flag and what the colors of the flag signifies.
• For the older students, pass out the Our Flag: Things You Should Know brochure or the Etiquette of the Stars and Stripes brochure also available from the VFW Store. Teach them how to properly fly it, salute it and dispose of it.

The following is an excerpt from a Red Skelton telecast with his interpretation of the Pledge that I find very powerful and would like to share it with you.

• I – me, an individual, a committee of one.
• Pledge – dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without self-pity.
• Allegiance – my love and my devotion.
• To The Flag – our standard, Old Glory, a symbol of freedom. Wherever she waves, there is respect because your loyalty has given her dignity that shouts freedom is everybody’s job.
• Of the United – that means that we have all come together.
• States – individual communities that have united into (our) great states…individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose, all divided with imaginary boundaries, yet united to a common purpose, and that’s love for county.
• Of America.
• And to the Republic – a state in which sovereign power is invested in representatives chosen by the people to govern. And government is the people and it’s from the people to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people.
• For Which It Stands.
• One Nation – meaning, so blessed by God.
• Indivisible – incapable of being divided.
• With Liberty – which is freedom and the right of power to live one’s own life without threats or fear or some sort of retaliation.
• And Justice – the principle or quality of dealing fairly with others.
• For All – which means it’s as much your country as it is mine.”

Note: Red Skelton wrote this; 'Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country and two words have been added to the Pledge of Allegiance – “under God”.'