News-Info-Alerts

Re: You Are Not Forgotten

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: August 18, 2003

"'You are not forgotten'
By Sue Book/Sun Journal Staff New Bern, North Carolina   

New flag raised near Cherry Point gate in honor of American POW/MIAs

HAVELOCK -- The winding brick paths through the little garden next to Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station felt a few extra feet on it Sunday as members of the St. Paul's Lutheran Church met to raise a new flag honoring prisoners of war and missing in action American troops.

Barely noticeable from the street, the garden tended by Cherry Point's maintenance crew since its dedication in 1988 received quiet civilian recognition this summer as St. Paul's congregation took on those duties as a community service project.

Jill Baldwin, who works on base and passes it several times a day, called to possibility of the project to the attention of Pastor Jim Daub and other church members in June.

As arrangements were made she said everyone aboard MCAS Cherry Point was encouraging and supportive in providing official permission to do something on government property.

Since the first day of weed-pulling June 22, about 40 church members have donated more than 140 man-hours to the garden, green now from abundant rain with juniper, Hawthorne, Nan Dina, yucca, hydrangea, pompous grass, rhododendron and lariape.

Kristin Skura, with tiny Jonathan in a papoose at Sunday's ceremony, said the boy will have known the garden and its new keepers since birth. His dad, Marine Steven Skura, is assisting in the garden-keeping.

Park benches and an arboretum backed into the trees give families of those honored with the flag that notes "You are not forgotten."

Sunday's ceremony remembered and honored the more than 140,000 Americans listed as captured, and the more than 88,000 still listed as missing since World War 1.

The tattered flag was lowered and a new one raised, something that happens by the necessity created by wear and tear, Baldwin said. The new one was donated by ET's Military Surplus.

The white-on-black flag raised Sunday is one designed by Norman Rivkees of Annin and Company in 1971 at the request of MIA wife and National League of Families member Mrs. Michael Hoff.

It became the official POW/MIA flag in August 1990 with a law passed by the 101st Congress which ties it particularly to those who are still prisoner, missing and unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.

National POW/MIA Recognition Day is celebrated each year on the third Friday of September, this year Sept. 19.

Since action by the 105th Congress in 1998, the POW/MIA flag has had a place in official ceremonies for Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, National POW/MIA Recognition Day and Veterans Day on the grounds or in public lobbies of major military installations and assorted national buildings including United States Postal Service post offices.

In the little loved garden at the main gate to Cherry Point MCAS, however, the POW/MIA flag flies every day, with a little help from friends.

Sue Book can be reached at 638-8101 ext. 262, or sue_book@link.freedom.com"