You’ve seen the flag. Black and white, a man’s silhouette, a guard tower, and the words You Are Not Forgotten. It flies beneath the Stars and Stripes at post offices and VA hospitals, and on one Friday every September, over the White House itself.
Where it came from, and who it’s still waiting for, is what our newest episode of Tales of American Spirit is about.
Our guest, Dr. Lance Armstrong, is a chiropractor in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Before that he was an Air Force captain flying B-52s, until a phone call one morning gave him 120 days to find a new career. Today he leads a Rolling Thunder chapter, part of the national POW/MIA advocacy group, and every September he rides his motorcycle to Andersonville, Georgia for the national day of recognition.
He never planned any of it. It started at a family reunion, when he opened the back cover of an old photo album and found a letter dated 1944. What the letter said, and what the Defense Department told him when he called about it 70 years later, is where the episode begins.
Watch on YouTube, or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The mission behind the flag
More than 81,000 Americans are still unaccounted for, from World War II through the conflicts that followed. Around half were lost at sea and may never come home. For the rest, the work has never stopped. The Defense Department runs a full-time accounting agency whose laboratories identify recovered remains, and families across the country, Dr. Armstrong’s among them, have given DNA samples and are still waiting for a phone call.
That’s what the flag is for. It’s a promise to the missing, and to the families who never got a letter that said what happened, that somebody is still looking.
Rolling Thunder holds the country to that promise. It began as a protest ride through Washington and grew into 84 chapters that keep the issue in front of the public, escort veteran funerals, give scholarships to Junior ROTC students, and help veterans in need. Dr. Armstrong has led Florida Chapter 1 for 6 years.
September 18
That one Friday comes on September 18 this year, National POW/MIA Recognition Day. Dr. Armstrong will spend it at Andersonville, the site of the Civil War’s most notorious prison camp and now home of the National POW Museum. The official ceremony is held at the Pentagon, with observances in towns across the country.
If the day means something to you, it doesn’t ask much. Fly the flag. Go to a local observance, or learn the name of someone from your town who never came home. Or do what Dr. Armstrong tells everyone, and join the mission. You don’t have to be a veteran, and you don’t have to ride.
Watch the full episode on YouTube, or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.