While Highlands Mayor Carolyn Broullon, the Knights of Columbus and representatives of many organizations and groups in Highlands are planning for a major ceremony honoring the American flag, and its first public presentation at the Twin Lights together with the borough’s 125th anniversary in October, Broullon recalled her first year in public office in the borough when the borough celebrated the 100th anniversary of Flag Day at the Twin Lights.
It was 2016 and Broullon had just assumed her position as a Highlands council person when Mary Jo Kenny, president of the Twin Lights Friends welcomed everyone to the Flag Day ceremony at the Twin Lights.
Mrs. Puffenbarger’s fourth grade class at the Highlands elementary school led a talk on “what the flag means to me” and John Trontis, assistant Director of the New Jersey Park Service, told the Story of Flag Day. Kendall Brighton sang both the National Anthem and America the Beautiful.
Broullon still has the program from that Flag Day ten years ago, and noted it also honored Bernard Cigrand, the father of Flag Day, as well as the resolution of June 14, 1777 in which “the flag of the 13 United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be 13 stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.
It was the John Paul Jones flag which was flown during the 1893 ceremony at the Twin Lights when the Pledge of Allegiance was given publicly for the first time as a sign of America’s national oath of loyalty.
Broullon noted it was included in the program for the Highlands festive event that it was President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 who ‘suggested and requested” that every community, on June 14 of each year, observe Flag Day with special patriotic exercises to give significant expression to “our thoughtful love of America, our comprehension of the great mission of liberty and justice to which we have devoted ourselves as a people, our pride in the country and our enthusiasm for the political programmers of the nation, together with “determination to make it greater and purer with each generation.” Wilson had also said in his Flag Day request that Americans should resolve for the country “to demonstrate to all the world its vital union in sentiment and purpose,” together with its duties, privileges, obligations and rights.”
In addition to the borough’s celebration of Flag Day in June, this year’s celebrations in October will honor the American flag, the fact the pledge was first said publicly at the Twin Lights, and the borough’s 125th anniversary. There will also be special presentations by the Knights of Columbus, both the Rev. Joseph Donnelly Chapter and the Bishop McFaul 4th Degree Assembly, the patriotic degree of the Knights of Columbus. It was the Rev. Michael McGivney, the Founders of the Knights of Columbus, who led the Knights in the successful addition of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Representatives of each of the organizations participating in the event are continuing their planning at their next meeting September 28, for a celebration that appears to include activities at several different locations as well as day long events.
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