Colonel Thomas Robeson Chapter DAR

06/15/2026

A Flag Day perspective.

Picture yourself standing in Philadelphia on June 14, 1777. The summer air hangs heavy over the city, horses clatter down dirt streets, and somewhere in the distance a blacksmith's hammer rings against hot iron. The Revolutionary War is far from over. Nobody knows whether this experiment called the United States is going to survive. There are no guarantees. No one has the advantage of reading the last chapter first. The men making decisions in Congress cannot look ahead and see what happens next. They cannot see Gettysburg, Normandy, the Moon landing, or the millions of homes where an American flag will someday fly from a front porch. All they know is that they are fighting for an idea, and that idea desperately needs a symbol.

That day, the Continental Congress passed a resolution stating that the flag of the thirteen United States would consist of thirteen alternating red and white stripes and thirteen white stars on a blue field representing a new constellation. It was only a single sentence, but history is funny that way. Sometimes the things that change the world arrive with great fanfare and trumpets. Sometimes they arrive as one brief sentence written on a piece of paper while everyone involved is simply trying to make it through another day.

The people living at that time could never have imagined where that flag would go. It would fly over wagon trains heading west into territory that seemed endless. It would be carried into battles by young men who were barely old to leave home. It would wave above schoolhouses, churches, farms, factories, fishing boats, and city skylines. It would be present on some of the nation's best days and some of its darkest. Through victories, failures, arguments, celebrations, and tragedies, the flag remained while entire generations came and went beneath it.

Interestingly, Flag Day itself took much longer to arrive. The flag was adopted in 1777, but Americans did not immediately begin celebrating June 14 as a national observance. Over time, schools and communities started recognizing the date, and the idea slowly gained momentum. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation establishing June 14 as Flag Day. Then in 1949, Congress officially designated June 14 as National Flag Day. Apparently even in government, some projects take a little longer than expected. If you've ever waited for parts to arrive, stood in line at the DMV, or tried explaining to a Jersey calf for the fourteenth time that annoying everyone is not a valid life goal, you can appreciate that some things move at a pace that could generously be described as "eventually."

What strikes me most about the flag is that it has never represented a perfect nation because there has never been a perfect nation to represent. The people who lived under that flag disagreed with each other in 1777, and we still disagree with each other today. They argued about politics, taxes, religion, government, and the future of the country. We argue about politics, taxes, religion, government, and the future of the country. Apparently some traditions are stronger than others.

Yet despite all of that, the flag became a reminder that there was something larger than any individual disagreement. It represented the idea that a free people could govern themselves, that rights came from God rather than from kings, and that liberty was worth preserving even when doing so was difficult. Those ideas were never easy. They still are not. Every generation has been handed the responsibility of deciding whether those principles are worth protecting.

When I think about Flag Day, I do not really think about cloth and thread. I think about the countless ordinary Americans whose stories never made it into history books. I think about farmers planting crops before sunrise, factory workers punching a clock, teachers helping children learn to read, soldiers standing watch far from home, parents trying to build a better future for their children, and grandparents praying that the next generation would inherit something worth keeping. The flag belongs as much to those people as it does to famous presidents and generals because nations are ultimately built by ordinary people faithfully doing ordinary things year after year.

Two hundred and forty-nine years is a long time. It is longer than the lifespan of any person these days, longer than most businesses survive, and longer than most countries manage to hold together. Yet here we are, approaching America's 250th birthday. The flag that began as thirteen stars representing a new constellation now carries fifty stars, but the idea behind it remains much the same. It is a reminder that freedom is not something previous generations preserved so we could take it for granted. It is something each generation receives, cares for, and passes on.

And honestly, considering how often Americans disagree with each other, the fact that we've managed to stay one nation this long might be one of the most impressive miracles in our entire history.

06/14/2026

DAR members honoring Flag Day at Proctor Building today in 102 degree temperatures

06/11/2026

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1495175749321037&set=a.584335637071724&type=3

Two hundred and fifty years ago today, a man missing four fingers from his left hand stood in a suffocating room in Philadelphia and spoke words that could have sent him to the gallows.

It was June 7, 1776. The Pennsylvania State House. The windows were closed against eavesdroppers, even in the summer heat. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia rose from his chair.

He knew how to command a room. People called him the American Cicero. Years earlier, a hunting gun had exploded in his hands and torn away the fingers of his left hand. Ever since, he had covered the injury with black silk. And he had learned how to use it. When he spoke, he would raise that wrapped hand, let the dark silk fall, and every eye would follow.

That day, he raised it and read three sentences.

The first was the one that changed history: “Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

He was not posing a question. He was proposing that thirteen colonies stop being British.

John Adams seconded the motion before Lee had fully settled back into his seat.

And then nothing happened.

That is the part almost everyone forgets. There was no thunderous applause. No signing. No sudden rush into history. Congress stared at what Lee had placed before them and hesitated. They voted to wait. Several delegations had no instructions from home allowing them to take such a dangerous step. Some wanted foreign alliances and a plan of confederation settled first. Others were simply afraid. They called a recess so delegates could ride home and ask their people the impossible question: are we ready to commit treason together?

Because that is exactly what it was.

Every man who would eventually say “aye” understood the calculation perfectly. There was not yet a legal independence. There was no nation. There was no army that had won a decisive victory. There was only a king with the strongest military on earth and a long memory. If the war failed, the document they were debating would become a confession. And the punishment for that confession was a rope.

They knew it.

They argued anyway.

The next day, Congress appointed a small committee to write a statement explaining the decision, if they ever found the courage to make it: Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston. They gave the pen to the quiet Virginian, Thomas Jefferson. The famous parchment we frame on walls and read aloud every Fourth of July was, in one sense, the explanation. It existed to defend Lee’s motion.

The motion came first.

And here is the detail that deserves to be carved in stone somewhere.

When the final vote for independence came on July 2, 1776, Richard Henry Lee was not in the room.

His wife had fallen ill. Virginia was forming its own new government and needed him at home. So the man who rose and proposed American independence got on a horse and rode away before the question he had asked was ever answered. Adams carried the argument for him and helped push it over the line.

Lee proposed it.

He did not vote for it.

And he never seemed troubled by who received the credit.

The resolution passed on July 2. Adams was so sure that date would be remembered forever that he wrote home predicting Americans would celebrate it for generations with bonfires and parades. He was wrong by two days. We kept the Fourth, the day the explanation was approved, and allowed the Seventh, the day one man first dared to say it aloud, to slip quietly from the calendar.

But the courage was never truly in the parchment.

The courage was in being first. In standing inside a closed room, raising a wounded hand, and reading three sentences that made you a traitor the moment they left your mouth. With your name attached. In front of witnesses. Before a single other colony had promised to stand beside you. Then trusting that strangers would find the same courage and finish what you began, even if you were not there to watch it happen.

So next month, when the fireworks rise into the sky, you might remember an earlier evening. A hot June day. A man who had already lost part of himself, lifting what remained of his hand and risking his life on the hope that others would be brave enough to agree.

The question he asked that day was never only about Britain.

It was the same question every generation eventually has to answer for itself: when the right thing is also the dangerous thing, and someone has to speak first,

would it have been you?

06/06/2026

05/19/2026

Regent, Faye Floyd, Sons of the American Revolution President, Blake Tyner and Vice Regent, Teresa Lewis

05/19/2026

2026 Officer Installation

05/19/2026

Our awesome group of DAR Members

05/19/2026

Our Scholarship winner also Caroline Hall going to UNC Wilmington

02/27/2026

Teresa bowed to show respect for her Ancestors

02/27/2026

Moore’s Creek America 250 celebration