SIMI VALLEY : Group Gathers for Flag Day Ceremony
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When Tina Abel sees the American flag, she remembers arriving in this country 40 years ago from Germany.
“I stepped down from a ship in New York Harbor,” said Abel, 69, who fled Europe after spending three years in a camp for war refugees. “They played ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ and we all cried.”
Abel was one of six flag bearers in a Flag Day ceremony sponsored by the Simi Valley Elks Lodge at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Sunday.
She and the other women who carried the flags belong to the Simi Valley Emblem Club, which is associated with the Elks.
During the ceremony, each woman carried a different historic flag of the United States as Elks Lodge members described the flags’ histories to the audience in the auditorium overlooking the Simi hills.
Flag Day has been observed in this country since at least 1908.
Congress officially recognized June 14 as a day for honoring the flag in 1949.
Elks Lodge member Al Spatz said the group has held Flag Day ceremonies at their lodge since 1974. This year, they held it at the library to attract a bigger crowd.
About 120 people attended Sunday’s event, according to Spatz.
Becky Dahl, 42, said her father fought in World War II.
She has always remembered Flag Day by associating it with Father’s Day, which comes about a week later.
“When your father was in a war, I think you always remember” Flag Day, she said.
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