Strong Constitution withstands insults

I express my gratitude to The Day’s commentaries for changing my mind on the controversial “football players disrespecting the flag” issue.

As a teenaged soldier in Vietnam I fingerprinted and anatomical-charted hundreds of American troops killed-inaction. One day this Memorial Activities Specialist — the Army’s euphemism for my duty, anonymously recommended via suggestion box that a flagpole with banner at permanent half-staff be erected at the mortuary entrance. It was approved and emulated at most American military installations accommodating military remains. After returning home I’d sporadically mourn lugubriously at vet cemeteries for those troops whom our most decorated warrior ever, Audie Murphy, called “the only real heroes,” the boys resting under our national emblem waving in the wind.

I was concomitantly revolted by athlete demonstration during National Anthems. But then sundry Day letter espousing the opposite view point sparked my recollection of how Sen. Edward Kennedy scuttled a 1989 proposed amendment to ban flag-burning (not verbatim) “Our Constitution is strong enough to withstand the insults of malcontents disgracing our national flag.”

Kennedy was correct. I extend a posthumous thanks to the late Sen. Kennedy and a temporal thanks to The Day. Martin Crane New London