📚 TBC COLLEGE AND SEMINARY 📖

Written by Kenneth Sheets, July 4, 2016 . . .

"The Flag on Independence Day . . . and Memories"

“July the Fourth has come again,

Another holiday,

A day of fun and food and friends,

And fireworks on display.

The flag of our great country,

Displayed so proudly still,

It stars and stripes so bold and bright,

And many hearts will thrill.

My mind, though, bears the mem'ries,

Of days and times all past,

The things that made me who I am,

The man those things would cast.

A small boy watched his father's casket,

Flag-draped, laid to rest,

That flag my dad had followed,

In our country's mighty test.

In school, we pledged the stars and stripes

Our honor and our love,

But never knew what many sensed,

As they watched it fly above.

We wondered at the distant gaze,

Why men emotions show;

They stood erect and tall and straight,

Tears from their eyes would flow.

And then our days, our time, had come,

To war, with not a word;

We, too, that flag had followed;

Our country's call we heard.

And then the things we saw, we did,

So much no tongue should tell,

And we began to understand,

What they had known so well.

So many men that flag had draped;

To home they'd never come,

But we the war had spared somehow,

We had made it home.

So now whene'er I see our flag,

Or sing our nation's song,

Emotions rise; I think of them,

That never did come home.”