Veteran teaches about proper flag disposal

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

DOUGLAS – Ever wonder what to do with the worn-out American flag at your loved one’s grave?

Or where to get a grave marker for a veteran? Or how to clean old tombstones?

If so, inspiration can be taken from Michael Yacino, chairman of St. Denis Parish’s building and grounds committee, which, among other tasks, oversees the parish cemetery’s care.

There’s a story behind these more recent stories. Ask Mr. Yacino where he served, and he grows suddenly silent, as if wrestling with painful emotions.

He said he voluntarily joined the military in 1962 after two years of college.

“My father told me I had a responsibility to serve my country,” he explained. “My two brothers felt the same way. We all served.” Their father, who ran a mill that produced woolen products for the military during the Korean War, was “kept out of the service by his employer.”

As for his own three years of service, Mr. Yacino said, “I was all over the place … the Far East … Europe … the States” during the Vietnam War. Vietnam, he said simply, was “not a good place to be.”

Was he in combat?

“It depends on how you look at it. I came back unscathed.”

Last fall, someone told this veteran there were graveside flags in the dumpster in St. Denis Cemetery at 62 Manchaug St. Mr. Yacino and buildings and grounds committee members took a look.  

“We found about 18 to 20 flags in there,” Mr. Yacino recalled. “We decided we need to educate the people and have a receptacle where they could put the flags,” so these emblems of United States could be “retired” with proper respect.

“One of the worst things” is to see flags in the trash or made into clothes, he said. He figures that most people who treat them this way don’t know any better.

“It’s upsetting for a veteran to see a flag disrespected,” he explained. “A lot of brothers died defending that flag.”

Last year Mr. Yacino said, he started trying to arrange for a place for cemetery visitors to deposit ruined flags.

A parishioner who wants to remain anonymous found a stainless steel U.S. flag retirement drop box online and bought it for about $2,000, he said.

Earlier this month Mr. Yacino bolted it to a cement foundation he laid in the cemetery near a storage structure he calls the tomb.

“Everybody comes in this way” to the cemetery, he said. “You’re going to see” the box. He put a sign near the dumpster, asking people not to dump flags there, but to put them in the box.

“I’ll check it every once in a while,” to see when there are enough flags to burn, he said. “I’d prefer the Scouts do it. I think it’s a good learning experience for them. It’s part of their culture and heritage.”

Mr. Yacino asked if Scouts BSA Troop 316, for which St. Denis Parish is the charter organization, would take flags deposited in the box, said Rebecca Berchem, the troop’s committee chairwoman. (Her husband, David Berchem, is Scoutmaster.)

“The troop does a flag retirement ceremony” for large and small flags townspeople give the Scouts, she said. She added that it is important to maintain the fire, so the flags are fully burned.

“We have a little script that’s read” when people attend the ceremony, or when a particular flag has special significance, such as where it was flown, she said.

Before Memorial Day each year, members of Cub Scout Pack 316 collect flags from veterans’ graves in St. Denis Cemetery and replace them with new ones provided by veterans, she said. A veteran instructs the boys about keeping the flags from touching the ground and how to position them by the graves.

The veterans burn those old cemetery flags retrieved just before Memorial Day, she said. The Scouts will burn ones that get ruined and deposited in the box during the year.

Mr. Yacino said that, to explain the box, he wants to talk to the Scouts and put information in the parish’s Sunday bulletin and on its website.

There are more than 300 veterans buried in St. Denis Cemetery, he said, and he thinks they served in all wars the United States was involved in except the Revolutionary War.

Mr. Yacino said he has worked to get markers for veterans buried there, and benefits for living veterans. Scouts and brothers Jack and Justin Dooner helped him raise sunken markers.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) furnishes upon request, at no charge to the applicant, a government headstone or marker for the unmarked grave of any deceased eligible Veteran,” says the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs website cem.va.gov.
Another project is cleaning gravestones in St. Denis Cemetery.

“I started with the veterans’ graves,” Mr. Yacino said. Then a couple of volunteers started cleaning other graves that need it.

“Families move away, so the stones aren’t taken care of,” Mr. Yacino maintained.

He said one of the volunteers learned about gravestone cleaning from a television program and developed a protocol more than 80 pages long for cleaning gravestones. Different kinds of stones – including limestone, marble and granite – need to be treated differently.

“We want people to do it right,” Mr. Yacino said.