Throughout my school years, in front of my long-gone alma matter, P.S. 44, there stood a tall and imposing flagpole on the corner of Beach 94th Street. Every day its huge American flag would mightily flutter unwaveringly and faithfully over Rockaway Beach Boulevard. Seeing it daily throughout my formative years into adolescence always gave me a sense of security and, in retrospect, it emanated much of the character of the town I was living in.
In those years during and after World War II, there was an especially prevalent feeling of modest but resolute Americanness among Rockawayites. When residents and down-for-the-day or season visitors communed on the peninsula, this sentiment seemed to manifest, particularly for Independence Day. During these years on the Fourth of July, everything seemed grander. Huge flags, hoisted outside of banks, police and fire stations, looked statelier. The decorative festoons of parades were more impressive, the boisterous cheer from Irish Town’s taverns seemed livelier, the block parties outside of Greenrose’s restaurant bar on 90th Street were noisily a little more spirited and the Playland fireworks ballooning the night sky with bursting colors seemed bigger than Wednesday night fireworks on the boardwalk. All of these festive events took place regularly throughout the Rockaway summers, but on the Fourth, it was the unceasing presence of red, white and blue that gave the day a palpable undeniable spirit of unity in the air. To me though, this profoundly special feeling was evident in the most unassuming of places. Down the boulevard, on porches and in shopfronts, I would see small unsolicited American flags, humbly displayed. European grocers and storekeepers from Cotts to Greenberg’s, to Wilensky’s fruits, to Smyth’s Bar and Sally Rose’s dress shop, down to my Uncle Dave Caligiuri’s bar and grill window on Beach 81st Street, all quietly and naturally had one outside or in their windows, each seemingly expressing their own personal sense of gratitude, pride, and support for this unique community united in Americanism.
In 1947 at end of the school year, my seventh-grade teacher, Mrs. Smith, assigned me and other students a task to offer our best poesies to signify the meaning of our flag in the school newspaper ‘The Pilgrim.” Instead of using riveting Revolutionary War and Star-Spangled Banner wordings from our history books, my thoughts turned rather to the little American flags humbly stringing the boulevard together in red, white and blue communion. Reaching across the town’s varying faiths, colors, and ethnicities, they signified the united common togetherness of Rockaway Beach as I saw it; a tightly knit, civic-minded community pillared in decency, prayer, patriotism, respect for each other and deference for the Flag. This indelible mark left on me resulted in my contribution with the simplest of poems titled “Our Flag.” Spectacular as fireworks and pomp may be, reverence for this blessed nation can be divinely measured in the sincerity of the little words and deeds of its people, like simple poems and small flags.
May this sentiment through the halcyon lens of a 12-year-old Rockaway girl in the nation’s 171st year be extended to fellow Americans in its 250th year with the same sincere reminder to preserve and nurture this treasure we share; moving forward, like then and now, with both prayer and reverence.
