The three Millstone Township schools will now fly flags in remembrance of military personnel whose whereabouts remain unknown.
JEFF GRANIT staff Richard Brody, a Vietnam War veteran, explains the symbols on the Prisoners of War/Missing in Action flag during a patriotic program held at Millstone Township Middle School Jan. 15. The Veterans of the Vietnam War Inc. and the Veterans Coalition New Jersey Post 03, of Millstone, donated three Prisoner of War/Missing In Action (POW/MIA) flags to the school district. The district will display the flags on the flagpoles in front of each school building.
At the Jan. 12 Board of Education meeting, Richard Brody, commander of N.J. Post 03, explained the flags’ significance. Bill Nurko, a Millstone resident and former township official who served as a captain in the U.S. Navy, Barry Rosenzweig, a Freehold resident and lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve, and John Sirignano, a Lakewood resident who served as a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army, joined Brody in presenting the flags to the school district.
Brody said that public law requires the POW/MIA flag to be flown during specified days. The flags must be flown during Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, National POW/MIA Recognition Day and Veterans Day.
According to Brody, law requires the flag to be flown over the U.S. Capitol, the White House, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and each national cemetery. The flag also has to be flown over the buildings containing the official offices of the secretaries of Defense, State, Veterans Affairs and the director of the Selective Service System. Every major military installation, each Veterans Administration Medical Center, and every U.S. post office also has to display a POW/MIA flag, he said. “The POW/MIA flag is symbolic of our nation’s commitment to obtaining the fullest possible accounting of allAmericans stillmissing and unaccounted for,” Brody said. Brody said the wife of U.S. naval pilot Michael Hoff, whose plane was shot down in 1970 while on a reconnaissancemission over Laos, created the flag in 1971. Hoff’s family did not receive an account of his whereabouts for nearly 30 years but the joint POW/MIA Accounting Command recovered his body in 1991, according to Brody.
The POW/MIA flag is the official flag of the National League of Families of American Prisoners of War and Missing in Action. Brody said there are still 78,000 servicemen missing from World War II, 8,100 missing from the Korean War, and 1,700 missing from Vietnam.
Superintendent of Schools Mary Ann Donahue said that Brody’s presentations on the issue to the schoolchildren have been very well received.