When an American flag is draped over a military casket, the stars should be positioned over the deceased’s heart.
Removing and presenting the flag is a meticulous, two-person job. The veteran at the foot of the casket (the “folder”) starts to fold, one corner over the next, with methodical, Euclidean precision, while another veteran (the “holder”) holds the other end stationary, until they come together in an act of hushed, sacred origami. The end result should be a tight isosceles triangle of blue background, with no red stripe peeking out, a meaningful memento for the bereaved, presented, in a humble flourish, on bended knee, with “thanks from a grateful nation.” Cue the bugler for taps.
“We practice this over and over, once a month, because we want everything to be perfect,” says Richard Thomas, solemnly demonstrating the ritual with his brother Charlie Thomas at the American Legion Hall in the northeast Georgia town of Cleveland as Veterans Day approaches. The men — vice president and president, respectively — lead the White County Color and Honor Guard, the first organization of its kind in Georgia to be certified by the Department of Defense to provide military funerals.
Credit: Photo courtesy of White County Color and Honor Guard/Tom Johnson
Credit: Photo courtesy of White County Color and Honor Guard/Tom Johnson
“We drill regularly to know the protocols inside and out, and stay sharp, just like the regular military,” Richard adds. “There’s no room for mistakes.”
Their discipline pays off. “The White County Color and Honor Guard is the gold standard for what they do,” says Devin Abdullah, North Regional Coordinator Level 2 trainer with the Military Funeral Honors Program of Georgia. “They take their mission seriously, and it shows.”
The guard, a nonpartisan nonprofit consisting of 35 veterans from all branches of the armed services, is the most active such group in the state, performing some 100 funerals a year and “presenting colors” at schools, churches, government functions and any occasions that call for a dash of spit-and-polish patriotism. While they primarily serve northeast Georgia, they do occasionally travel to Atlanta.
Guard members are volunteers ranging in age from their 40s to their 80s who receive no compensation or government funding. For a while, they stayed busy honoring the Greatest Generation, doing an average of three or four funerals a week for World War II vets. Now most of their services are for Korean conflict or Vietnam-era veterans, with the occasional soldier who served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
“You have to maintain your composure and your emotions while you’re doing this,” says Richard Thomas, “and that can be hard when a widow is looking down at you, looking you in the eye, with tears streaming down her face. It’s especially hard if you’re doing it for a really young veteran.”
Adds his brother, “For any veteran who served honorably, this is literally the very least we can do. They write a blank check with their lives. I also think it’s important that kids see what real heroes look like.”
The Honor Guard is emblematic of a welcome shift in attitudes toward the military, they say. Richard Thomas, a soft-spoken mountain man, recalls his own service. He was 19 when he enlisted in the Marine Corps and found himself among the first forces to enter the DMZ in 1967.
Credit: Photo courtesy of White County Color and Honor Guard/Tom Johnson
Credit: Photo courtesy of White County Color and Honor Guard/Tom Johnson
“The North Vietnamese were embedded and just waiting for us,” he says. He caught shrapnel in his abdomen and shoulder but still went back out on 14 operations. “But I came home, and that was an era when people were spitting on us and calling us baby killers,” he says. “So I took off my uniform and set it aside. There was such a stigma.”
These days, at age 77, he is seldom not squared away in his dress blues. “That’s one reason we started this, to try to make up for the way so many veterans were treated in the past.”
The North Georgia group began in 1998 as part of a Veterans Day tribute at Mount View Baptist Church in Cleveland.
“That went so well that we wanted to expand it,” Charlie Thomas says. Not long afterward, 9/11 thrust the military into a higher gear. “They were too overwhelmed to perform all of the funerals. They didn’t have the staffing and resources, so we decided to step up,” he says. “We’ll do it for anyone who asks as long as the person was honorably discharged, whatever their rank, and we don’t require any special paperwork or documentation. The family can just request us” through the funeral home.
Earlier this summer, Franklin Cox III sought the services for his father, Frank Cox, a Marine vet and author of “Lullabies for Lieutenants,” who is interred at the Georgia National Cemetery in Canton.
“It’s an amazing, cathartic, fulfilling feeling that overcomes you when you’re handed that flag, the utmost reverence of it, there’s no feeling quite like it,” he says, adding that he is making the banner the centerpiece of a “shrine, for lack of a better word,” to his larger-than-life dad.
“I still get choked up if I think about the way they say, ‘On behalf of a grateful nation …’ They’re providing an invaluable service for heroes and those heroes’ families,” Cox says.
“It never gets easy,” Richard Thomas says. “In fact, it gets you every time. But that’s why we do it.”
About the Author
