News-Info-Alerts

Re: POW-MIA Flag Flies High

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: March 21, 2002

"New flag hangs on governor's OK

by Mike Archbold - Journal Reporter

AUBURN -- Jeff McIntyre has been waving a black and white flag in front of public officials in the state for the past five years.

Last week, in the final hours of the state Legislative session, his flag-waving paid off with passage of a bill requiring all public entities in the state to fly the POW/MIA flag on six national holidays.

It calls for the flag to be flown on Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, the Fourth of July, National POW/MIA Recognition Day and Veterans Day.

Gov. Gary Locke is expected to sign the bill in the next few weeks.

McIntyre, 52, will be there for the signing along with his family who he credited with giving him support in his flag-waving all those years. His efforts took him away from home often.

He hopes to round up some POWs and families of MIAs he has met. Sen. Jim Kastama, D-Puyallup, also will be there. Kastama has been point man for the bill in Olympia for two sessions.

``It's pretty cool,'' he said of the bill's approval.

Kastama called McIntyre about 10:30 p.m. last Thursday with the news. McIntyre had already gone to bed thinking that the bill wouldn't get approval. It had failed before in the 2001 session.

``I woke up the next morning and I thought I had had a dream,'' he said and laughed, the lines on his forehead deepening with his smile.

Auburn City Hall, where McIntyre works in facility maintenance, has flown the distinctive black and white flag every day since February 1998. The flag was designed by the national League of Families of POWs and MIAs.

Auburn was the first city council McIntyre convinced to fly the flag. Other POW/MIA flags also fly daily at the city's Bicentennial Park and the Auburn airport.

The Auburn School District bought a POW/MIA flag for every school to fly on holidays.

Flush with the Auburn success, he wrote to other cities with the same request. ``I just thought I was on a roll,'' he said.

He wrote many hundreds of letters to cities, towns and school districts asking them to fly the flag on national holidays. Eventually, he got 42 cities who agreed to fly the flag and about another 40 school districts around the state.

The idea of the flag flying above schools on holidays where many students know nothing about the POW/MIA issues appeals to McIntyre, a Vietnam veteran. He thought the flag itself could spark classroom discussions.

``I finally decided to go for broke and try to get it done statewide,'' he recalled. He met then-Rep. Kastama in 1998, who first managed to get a House resolution passed in 1999 encouraging the flying of the flag.

In the 2001 session, McIntyre floated a bill through Kastama requiring the flying of the flag. It failed.

This session, the bill sailed through the Senate and then passed March 5 in the House with no nay votes. But there was a hitch. An amendment had been snuck through changing the ``shall'' fly the flag to ``may'' fly the flag.

``I was mad,'' McIntyre said. He called Kastama who also was upset and pulled back the bill. The battle was on.

``There were just a couple (legislators) who felt they shouldn't force cities to do that,'' McIntyre said. ``I don't know why. They force people to do something every year.''

The bill looked dead again, he said, until Rep. Tom Campbell, R-Spanaway, who is also a former Special Forces captain, stepped up to lobby for the bill on the last night of the session. The bill passed the House without a no vote.

McIntyre plans to ask Campbell to be there for the bill signing.

One person he can't ask to be at the signing but who will be there in spirit is McIntyre's dad, Edward, who inspired his son's mission. His father died in 1977.

Edward McIntyre was one of the 12,000 American soldiers who surrendered to Japanese forces in the Philippines on April 8, 1942. He survived the infamous Bataan death march that took 10,000 American and Filipino lives and ended up as a POW in Japan.

McIntyre said his father and mother didn't talk about that time, maybe because his father wanted to forget it. But once when he was 10 years old, McIntyre was watching a documentary on the Bataan death march with his father when he actually saw his dad on the television.

He remembered pointing at the screen and saying, ``Hey, Dad, it's you.''

He looked back at his father and saw he was crying.

McIntyre said he isn't through yet. He plans to ask Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash., to push for a similar bill nationally.

In the wake of Sept. 11, and the recent report that a U.S. Navy pilot shot down over Iraq in 1991 may still be alive in Bagdad, there's even more reason not to forget soldiers captured or missing in action, he said.

PHOTO by Gary Kissel/Journal: Jeff McIntrye successfully lobbied for a law passed last week on the last night of the Legislative session saying that POW/MIA flags must be flown on national holidays over public buildings in the state.

South County Journal
600 South Washington, Kent WA 98032"