Riders needed for this escort; route and Itinerary below

                              Notify your state captain if you can participate!

On April 25, 2006 there was a flag flown by the 101st Airborne Medvac unit in Iraq, to pay honor to Rick Monday, a Marine Corps veteran, who committed an unselfish act of Patriotism in 1976 on a ball field as protesters were about to burn our American flag. The flag that was flown in Iraq was sent to Mrs. Monday in hopes that she would forward it to her husband as a token of his support for his beloved country.  To pick up this very flag in Florida and take it to Los Angeles, California to Dodger stadium to present it to Rick in a post-game ceremony on 4th of July, preceding the 4th celebration.

This is a national Mission and Snap is the man is in charge of special missions for the PGR nationally. We have a deadline of 01 JULY 06 to get this flag to LA to prepare for the ceremony. Snap is working on the actual itinerary and it is posted below.

The days listed are the days each state has the flag. Pick your own route State Captains; just setup the handover to next state. The first shift lists three days in case Mrs. Monday wants the start Sunday instead of Saturday.

June 17-18-19   Florida, Georgia and Alabama
Flag picked up by Florida PGR, Carried to Fl/Ga line on I-75 south of Valdosta Ga.
Flag carried up I-75 to Tifton Ga then west on 82 to Eufaula Al
Flag carried on Hwy 82 to Montgomery Al ( I live there) then north on I-65 to the
Tenn line

June 20th   Tn
Flag carried North on I-65 through Nashville to the Kentucky line.

June 21st    Kentucky
Flag carried North on I-65 to the Indiana line through Louisville Ky

June 22       Indiana
Flag carried North on I-65 to Indianapolis then West on I-70 to Illinois

June 23       Illinois

Flag carried West on I-70 through Illinois to St. Louis Missouri

June 24        Missouri
Then on I-44 to Joplin Missouri then to the Oklahoma line

June 25        Oklahoma
Then through Claremore/Tulsa then open route to Oklahoma City and I-40 then to Texas line
June 26         Texas
Flag carried through Amarillo to New Mexico line

June 27/28      New Mexico (a wide state)
Flag carried through Albuquerque to Arizona line

June 29th         Arizona

Flag carried through Flagstaff on I-40 to Needles Calif Line

June 30/1st      California.

Finally through Calif to La at the stadium

The actual routes inside each state are up to the individual state captains

Please monitor this Thread in special Missions for more information and progress. Remember this is a national mission being coordinated by the individual state captains in each state the flag is passing through.

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Per Snap

Video link of Rick Monday of the Cubs rescuing our flag from being burned during a game at Dodger Stadium 1976.



Copy and paste link in browser window.

THIS IS THE VIDEO


~Mike

"What they were doing was extremely wrong as far as I was concerned," said Monday, who served six years in the Marine Reserves. He reached them about the time they got the second match lit and were about to torch the flag. "There's a picture that I think won the Pulitzer Prize and it showed me reaching down and grabbing the flag," he said. Monday got the flag and handed it to Doug Rau, a Dodger's pitcher. That was the last Monday saw of it until a month later. The Dodgers came to Wrigley Field and Al Campanis, a Dodgers executive, presented the flag to Monday. "It's displayed very proudly in my home," he said.

Monday got a hero's welcome wherever the Cubs played the rest of that season. It was the last thing he wanted. He had simply done what he thought was the right and honorable thing to do. He had visited a veterans hospital when he played for Oakland and had seen how people's lives had been shattered fighting for what that flag represents. "It's the way I was brought up," he said. "You would have done the same thing had you been as close geographically as I was, I get the idiots stopped."

I was trying to track down the flag and found this from an article a couple of months ago.

Back in '76, Monday was presented with the flag in a ceremony at Wrigley Field by Dodgers executive Al Campanis. It hung in his home in Vero Beach, Fla., until a couple of years ago, when the house sustained severe damage from a hurricane. Now it's in a safety deposit box.

Monday wouldn't say how much the flag is insured for, but "you'd have to add a lot of zeros. People have offered an outrageous amount of money for it -- not that it's for sale."