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March 31, 2003
Blue Star banner symbolizes service
By MARK HARPER | News-Journal Staff Writer
DELTONA — Pride hangs in Delia Hanks´ front window.
The Blue Star Banner |
Its look – a blue star centered inside a white field surrounded by a red rectangle – is as simple as its message: One of mine is supporting all of us.
Hanks is perhaps the first Deltonan to hang the Blue Star Service Banner, a flag designed to tell the world, or at least her neighbors, that her son is a soldier.
She and her friends at American Legion Post 255 hope the banners return to the prominence they held in a Rockwellian America. Patented in 1917 by an army captain who had two sons fighting on the front lines in Europe, the banners were common sights during World War II.
Then they disappeared.
Today, the American Legion and others are attempting to revive the tradition as a way of supporting troops and fostering patriotism.
While not yet popular enough to challenge flags, yellow ribbons and doves as our favorite wartime icons, some legion officials say the banners are moving fast.
“It´s really caught on now,” said Lee Harris, a national Legion spokesman. “We shipped 18,190 banners last week. ...We only shipped 71,000 in all of 2002.”
While interest may be building, it apparently hasn´t reached some parts of Volusia County.
“We´re not getting much response,” said Cmdr. August Beck of Holly Hill American Legion Post 120. The post will give banners to any families that request them. “I haven´t heard any talk on those blue stars in two months,” Beck said.
And Post 270 hasn´t discussed making the banners available to residents of Port Orange, said Ed Pierce, the post´s finance officer.
Still, Dyke Shannon, executive director of the Florida American Legion, called the Blue Star effort “well-received” in the state.
A few months before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an American Legion post in Chili, N.Y., was kicking around ideas at a meeting.
A Korean War veteran named Arthur Reimherr recalled how the Blue Star banner made his father, Arthur Sr. – a World War I Navy veteran – proud.
“I remember three things about him: that banner, a silver dollar and the farm,” Reimherr said. “He gave everything away except the banner, and I ended up with that. I still have it, too.”
Reimherr, 73, said banners were most popular during World War II, when 16 million Americans – about 50 times the number in the Persian Gulf today – fought overseas.
“The saddest thing was when a blue star changed to a gold star,” he said. That meant the serviceman from that family had died.
But when he served in the Navy during the Korean War, banners weren´t hung.
“We went into Korea as a police action and it wasn´t thought of as a war until it was almost over,” Reimherr said. “During Korea and Vietnam, they didn´t use the banner and that (support) was one of the things that was missing.”
Bringing back the banners, he thought, would help provide troops overseas with self-esteem. The American Legion approved the plan at a national convention only a couple of weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks fueled a patriotism that has created demand for such icons.
Reimherr´s legion post in Chili, a small town near Rochester, has given out 400 banners.
Those backing the banner see it as a show of support, a community-builder, a measure of pride.
“I don´t think it´s a political statement,” said Robert Morrill, a past New York State legion commander who has championed the banners. “It shows us people are willing to put their lives on the line for what we believe in.”
Bill O´Hara, a legion member who is organizing the Blue Star efforts in Deltona, said he envisions banners bringing neighbors together.
“If you see the flag flying, you might want to stop and talk about what´s going on with other people,” said O´Hara, who has a banner in his window supporting his wife´s cousin, a soldier in Iraq.
But Barry O´Neill, a political science professor at UCLA, sees the banners as less of a symbol than a simple statement.
“A symbol is typically ambiguous,” said O´Neill, the author of a 1999 book, ‘Honor, Symbols and War.’
“Often, a symbol is an element that is lifted out of some larger story or idea, usually an emotional one, and the symbol represents the whole idea.”
Consider how the American flag is used for different purposes. Some people wave it in support of war. Others wave it to show support for troops even at anti-war rallies.
“The Blue Star banners are different because they don´t seem to be part of a larger story,” O´Neill said. “They´re more like a statement put in the form of a picture, and they´re very specific: ‘I have three sons overseas.’ ”
Nonetheless, each family´s statement about one of its own goes beyond pieces of nylon sewn together.
The pride of Delia Hanks – the reason for her Blue Star banner – is a 30-year-old staff sergeant Marine based in California.
An abused boy abandoned at 3, Michael Hanks struggled with his identity and seemed directionless before he enlisted nine years ago.
“This was a wonderful thing for him,” said Delia Hanks, who first cared for Michael as a foster mom and later adopted him. “It´s turned his whole life around.”
Now he is married to another Marine, Cheryle, who is about to have their child.