Gold Star Families Memorial in Bronte, Texas, with flag framed in the cutout of a soldier. Photo from KSAN TV and the Concho Valley homepage.
In wars in the 20th century, mothers with children serving in the military put a red-trimmed, white flag with a blue star in the middle, in their windows to show their child was off at war. Blue Star Mothers.
If that child died, the blue star was replaced with a gold star. Blue Star Mothers became Gold Star Mothers.
On the last Sunday of September we fly our U.S. flags in honor of those mothers of fallen soldiers, and the soldiers’ families, for Gold Star Mothers Day. In 2018, that is September 30.
So, everyone should fly a U.S. flag on Sunday, if you can.
More:
- Explanation of the day in the Attleboro, Massachusetts Sun-Chronicle
- “Honor and Sacrifice: Local Gold Star Mother Ruth Ann Van De Giesen shares her experience,” George W. Rhodes The Sun Chronicle, September 27, 2018
Also see at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
It’s a commercial suggestion — from a brewery, I think — but still a good idea. On Instagram:
LikeLike
Sunday is international translation day, too. You don’t need to fly the U.S. flag for the day, because you’re already flying it for Gold Star Mothers, right?
LikeLike
I sorta like it.
It reminded me of the great memorial done to the fall of the Berlin Wall by Winston Churchill’s granddaughter, Edwina Sandys. The cutouts leave negative space, and sometimes that can be very powerful.
Here’s Sandys’s work, partly at the FDR library:
https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/berlin-wall-in-the-u-s-the-fdr-library/
And here, at the National Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri, the rest of the wall Sandys used.
http://streamingmuseum.org/breakthrough/
(A photo from the explanation here)
I think this is a sculpture best seen in person; you need to walk around the wall, and look through the spaces that are cut out, and then it hits you that this wall divided a people unjustly, and deserved to fall.
There are a few other Gold Star Mother memorials around. I probably should do a post on them, too.
LikeLike
That is a very unusual memorial in Bronte.
LikeLiked by 1 person