Tommy Denton

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Just above the glittering undulation of the stream flowing through the steep folds of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a campfire blazed in the unseasonable warmth of a late January afternoon.

A small contingent in Boy Scout uniforms gathered in ceremonial formation nearby. Winter had withdrawn its normal blast of frigid winds as if to remove lingering distractions from the focal point of the fire ring.

A few weeks ago, Roanoke Times human resources director Camille Wright Miller brought a frayed, weather-worn American flag to me with a request that the Scouts "retire" it properly. Her son, Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Miller, had served one tour of duty in Iraq, and the family had flown the flag continuously in honor of him and his comrades-in-arms.

Staff Sgt. Miller now awaits his second deployment, and his family will fly a new flag in his honor.

Actually, those Scouts already had retired many flags. But as I explained the circumstances that led this particular worn banner to be placed in the embrace of the senior patrol leader, the eyes of the Scouts and their adult leaders reflected a sobering grasp of the deeper, personal realities that give ultimate meaning to national symbols.

The gentle splashing of the nearby stream accentuated the still, quiet splendor of the scene. The air swelled with the pungent aroma of wood smoke as the flames shimmered and stabbed skyward like yellow-orange scimitars.

The young men in the honor guard formed a square. As the flag was unfolded, each member gripped the fraying fabric and stretched it taut while the leader began to dismember it with a knife.

Beginning with the blue field -- with its 50 white stars, representing the courage and dignity of a great nation -- he cut along its edge and removed it, placing it over his right shoulder.

Then he cut away three lengths of the red and white stripes -- the red signifying the blood shed in the nation's defense, the white representing the purity of the ideals of liberty and justice for all. He draped one strip over the right shoulder of each of the other members of the honor guard.

The flag was not to be merely discarded but reverently rendered to ashes that would return to the bosom of the land that gave life and hope to the ideals for which it stood and over which it had waved proudly.

The formation then proceeded slowly to circle the campfire, the flag's several parts now gently resting on the shoulder of each Scout. As the honor guard made each pass around the fire, a portion of the flag in turn would be committed to the flames, beginning with the senior patrol leader and the starred blue field.

As the fire burst into orange spasms consuming the nylon material, gray-black belches of smoke ascended and dissolved into the azure expanse of the sky above.

Just as the burning embers consumed the worn flag's fibers, they also branded into the imaginations and memories of those who witnessed the ceremony a moving lesson that fire may destroy a material symbol but can never quench its enduring meaning so long as it burns in the hearts and minds of those who cherish the ideals it symbolizes.

Those are lessons that the Scouts learned back when they were earning their Tenderfoot rank, introduced when they observed their first ceremonial flag retirement. They learned then that the destruction they would perform was also a solemn consecration.

No "spirit" leaves the cloth as it is cut by a sharp blade and consumed by fire. The smoke rising toward the sky and remnant of ash will not be "sacred." The flag simply will be no more.

I hope they will have learned -- and so come to believe -- that the spirit of duty, honor and courage in defense of freedom dwells deep within their hearts, souls and minds, not in the fibers of a banner that they have personally reduced to smoke and ashes.

I also hope, as they grow older and encounter disagreement and dissent, that they will begin to understand that the commitment to liberty and justice for all must be woven of far sterner stuff than cloth.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.