One morning a few years ago I was out for a short walk in our neighborhood when some movement across the lawn in the front of the elementary school to my right caught my eye. I couldn’t help but to stop and watch.
A man was raising the American flag, with the California flag tethered just beneath it, smartly to the top of a tall flagpole. It was a beautiful sight watching the flags climb up into the bright morning sunshine – with a slight breeze lifting the wriggling flags out from the pole. The breeze seemed to be cooperating with the sun as the flags waved slowly in the air, and the sun, rising over the Sierra Nevada in the east, lit them up as if it were a big spotlight specially designed to show off the Red, White and Blue.
But what happened next was more inspiring. With nobody around to impress, the man stepped back a pace or two from the flagpole, stopped, looked up, and then proudly saluted with a smart snap of his right arm. He had completed the daily task, which he obviously considered both important and an honor. Then the man turned away to empty the trash and attend to his other responsibilities as a custodian at Vencil Brown Elementary School in Roseville.
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