From The Vault Of Art Shay: You're A Grand Old Flag

A WW I vet who heard the shot that took his spine at Verdun in the winter of 1916. He was one of the lucky ones. While fighting in a French unit of the AEF that lost 462,000 menMdash; the Germans only lost 367,00—he made it home as a cripple. Still flying two flags on his patriotic contrivance.\r\n

After WW II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, fired by President Truman for disobeying orders and attacking the Chinese, made a nation-wide \"Old soldiers never die- they just fade away...\" series of speeches, including one SRO at Soldier Field. Then he faded away.\r\n\r\n

A GI\'s family who finally ran out of money to pay their dead soldier\'s mortgage proudly flies a huge American flag a few feet from the \"For Sale\" sign that will result in the building\'s destruction... ending up as a tax sale on the cheap for some lucky troller of the mortgage scene.\r\n

At the bottom of the Grand Canyon this Havasupi grandma shows off the relics of a son\'s and a husband\'s death in WW II: a unit flag, a JFK poster and a couple of well worn track suits worn in segregated high school meets by her son and husband. In their time indigenous American Indians were not counted as real Americans by the scalawag dirt farmers they worked for.\r\n

Near currently embattled Madison, Wisc., a Hippie attending a rock music festival takes his flag-quilt along to the John so it won\'t be stolen.\r\n

Flag Day in the 1960s found a two-flagged patriot on his north Chicago porch watching a parade go by commemorating the day.\r\n

A perennial self-acclaimed super patriot used to run in local elections year after year, campaigning as an icon.\r\n

At a rock concert near Madison in the 1970s, under a big flag with an elm tree branch holding it proudly aloft waved over fields of spaced out celebrants.\r\n

Half costume, half shelter against the cold ground and the night air, this young patriot camped out all Flag Day night.\r\n

\"Make sure the flag is coming outta my head,\" McDonald\'s founder Ray Kroc suggested as I shot him for \<em\>Time\<\/em\>.\"I\'m as American as you can be.\" He was eating his first Big Mac at his first midwestern franchise. For some reason this picture has become Kroc\'s unofficial portrait. A true picture of successful American enterprise.\r\n

The ghost of Abe Lincoln appears every Flag Day somewhere, as this one does near Milwaukee.\r\n

King Frederick IX and Queen Ingrid of Denmark [October 1960] tour Chicago at night under guidance of Mayor Richard J. Daley visible through an official welcoming flag.\r\n

The day he became President of Israel in 1948, Chaim Weissman, a Nobel prize chemist, held an impromptu press conference at the Pennsylvania Railroad Station where he was greeted by the press and lots of followers. At the far right was Sargent Shriver- who would become famous later on n the time of the Kennedys. Here he was escorting the new dignitaries. I stumbled into this event by accident. I was officially a Time-Life reporter- breaking the Time Inc. rule that writing and photography don\'t mix - Ultimately this rule was why I left the safety of a \<em\>Life\<\/em\> magazine salary for the rigors of freelancing. It\'s why I\'m here.\r\n

On a long pat Flag Day my 300 mm telephoto lens pulled in State Street\'s flags from a far south subway platform.\r\n