The Flag Retirement Ceremony That Was A Long Time Coming

We held a flag retirement ceremony tonight for a bunch of flags that we and the local American Legion had collected over the years.

Generally speaking, it’s not rare for us to hold a flag retirement ceremony. However, it’s been a while since we’ve held one.

We haven’t intentionally avoid it. We’re just always busy with other activities, and it’s sometimes hard to squeeze it into the schedule. Sadly, it’s probably been a few years since we’ve had one.

Fortunately, tonight we were able to fix that by having a flag retirement at the local American Legion.

There Was No Shortage of Flags

Just because we haven’t HELD a flag retirement in a while, that doesn’t mean we didn’t NEED to have one.

When someone has a flag that needs to be retired, Scout Troops are frequently contacted. The local VFW and American Legion are probably the first groups that people seek out, but right behind them are Scout troops…at least that’s how it seems to our troop! Nearly every month someone gives us a flag that is ready to be retired. Sometimes it’s a whole pile of flags! Combine that with the fact that we haven’t done a flag retirement in a while, and…well…we had a lot of flags to retire.

The local American Legion was apparently in the same boat. They reached out to Cub Scout Pack 39 to see if the Cub Scouts could do a flag retirement for them. We work with that Pack a lot, so they in turn reached out to us to see if we would be willing to do the flag retirement, with their Cub Scouts helping out. Since we had talked about doing one ourselves for a while (but just never got around to it), and because we love to hold activities that allow us to involve the Pack, this was the motivation we needed to actually get a flag retirement on the calendar.

When they contacted us in the Spring, we were unfortunately too busy to do it at that time. Everyone was buys with end-of-school activities, plus we had our Summer Camp and Philmont Trek events in June. There just wasn’t time to squeeze in another event. Fortunately, the American Legion was fine with us postponing it until later in the Fall.

It Finally Happened

Tonight we were finally able to hold the flag retirement.

Given the number of flags we had, there was no way we could actually conduct the full ceremony for each one…even though the ceremony is fairly short. We would have been there for days! So, we did the full ceremony using a single flag, and then continued the ceremony by retiring the remaining flags one by one.

While we had a lot of flags to retire, it was nothing compared to what the Legion had! There was no way we were going to get through them all in one night. We simply did what we could, and said that we’d plan another one in the near future to help them out. We may also reach out to other local troops to see if they would be willing to do their own ceremonies as well.

A Great Leadership/Teaching Opportunity

Scouts, especially at the troop level where the Scouts are typically between the ages of 12-18, is really all about teaching leadership skills. Yes, there are a lot of other skills we practice, and there’s a bunch of other skills the Scouts learn, but many of them all come back to leadership. This is one of the reasons the Scouts almost always do things with their patrol or the rest of the troop. They’re learning how to work together with others and to be good leaders.

One of the best ways to practice and use those skills is with our favorite Cub Scout Pack. The Cub Scouts really look up to the older Scouts in the troop. They love to see all of the fun things the troop gets to do. It’s especially fun for them when they get to participate in activities WITH the troop.

Likewise, the Scouts in our troop really enjoy helping the Cub Scouts to learn or do something new. They remember back when they were in Cub Scouts and someone else was teaching them. Now, they’re the teachers, and they get to help the younger Cub Scouts.

This was a great opportunity for our Scouts to show the Cub Scouts how to do a flag retirement. They of course did a great job, letting the Cub Scouts participate in the ceremony, and showing them what to do. It’s always great to see them all working together so well, while also having fun.