Six years ago next month, my grandfather passed. A Navy veteran who fought in the Korean War, Eugene Springer was buried with military honors. I will always remember the pride we felt – despite our sadness – when we heard the 21-gun salute. And while I had held my emotions intact during the entire service, when the folded flag from his coffin was presented to my grandmother, I couldn’t hold back the tears.
One thing I remember about that emotional day is that the serviceman who presented the flag to Grandma knelt in front of her as he said, “On behalf of the President of the United States and the Chief of Naval Operations, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciate for your loved one’s service to this country and a grateful Navy.”
Maj. Gen. Michael S. Linnington, Joint Force Headquarters-National Capital Region/Military District of Washington, commanding general, hands a flag to Barbara Broyles, during the funeral of her father, Lt. Col. Faith Jr., in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va., in 2013.
The kneeling wasn’t especially significant at the time. I assumed it was because we were seated under a tent on that dreary, rainy autumn day. And when the recent controversy surrounding NFL players kneeling during the national anthem started anew last weekend, I didn’t make any connection to Grandpa’s flag presentation. Until this morning.
When I woke up and checked Facebook, I saw a post from a dear friend, and something clicked.
The kneeling suddenly made sense. While I had supported the football players’ freedom to kneel, sit or stand all along, I now see it in a new light. Of course, my journalistic instincts required I check the facts. And it turns out it’s all true.
How quickly we’ve all forgotten that when Colin Kaepernick first started protesting the maltreatment of African-Americans and injustices they face every day in 2016, he sat during the playing of the “Star Spangled Banner.” As Snopes confirms, he sat on the bench while the anthem played during a preseason game in August of last year. The press started publicizing his protest later the same month.
“I have great respect for the men and women that have fought for this country,” Kaepernick told reporters at the time. “I have family, I have friends that have gone and fought for this country. And they fight for freedom, they fight for the people, they fight for liberty and justice, for everyone. That’s not happening. People are dying in vain because this country isn’t holding their end of the bargain up, as far as giving freedom and justice, liberty to everybody. That’s something that’s not happening. I’ve seen videos, I’ve seen circumstances where men and women that have been in the military have come back and been treated unjustly by the country they have fought for, and have been murdered by the country they fought for, on our land. That’s not right.”
The narrative up until this point we all know. What most of us don’t understand, however, is what happened next. On Aug. 30, 2016, the Army Times published an open letter to Kaepernick from former Seattle Seahawk Nate Boyer, a former Green Beret who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the letter, Boyer described his pride when he stood on the field and listened to the anthem during his sole NFL appearance as a 34-year-old rookie.
“That moment meant so much more to me than even playing in the game did, and to be honest, if I had noticed my teammate sitting on the bench, it would have really hurt me,” Boyer wrote.
“I’m not judging you for standing up for what you believe in. It’s your inalienable right. What you are doing takes a lot of courage, and I’d be lying if I said I knew what it was like to walk around in your shoes. I’ve never had to deal with prejudice because of the color of my skin, and for me to say I can relate to what you’ve gone through is as ignorant as someone who’s never been in a combat zone telling me they understand what it’s like to go to war.”
And guess what happened next? Did Kaepernick and Boyer start sniping at one another on social media? Not even close. The two athletes got together and talked. And it was after that pivotal meeting that the kneeling began. And it was the veteran who suggested it.
"We sorta came to a middle ground where he would take a knee alongside his teammates," Boyer told HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel last year. "Soldiers take a knee in front of a fallen brother's grave, you know, to show respect. When we're on a patrol, you know, and we go into a security halt, we take a knee, and we pull security."
So, as it turns out, the reason Kaepernick – and now an assortment of other players from a variety of teams – takes a knee in their protest is precisely to show the same respect as was shown my grandmother as she received the folded flag from Grandpa’s coffin. And he got the idea from a combat veteran. He listened to the advice, and modified his protest in order to show proper respect to our flag, our nation and our military.
Why hasn’t this been more widely reported? Why have we forgotten how this all began? Well, perhaps because it doesn’t make as good a headline as a certain president calling athletes sons of bitches and demanding their termination. Positive stories don’t get the clicks that negative rhetoric attracts. And perhaps it’s because of our ingrained racial bias.
Who knows why. The important thing is to acknowledge the truth when it’s presented to us, and remember it next time we see a flagrant headline or read yet another Twitter rant.
On a further note, instead of the outrage so many have voiced at the kneeling in the NFL, why not call out all the other citizens who regularly defy the U.S. flag code? How often have we seen the flag used as clothing or as paper plates, napkins and the like?
Is taking a knee (particularly now that you understand the background behind the action) so much worse than someone wearing flag underwear, which undoubtedly gets stuck up their crack? Seriously, skid marks on our flag? Or as a napkin that will inevitably be wadded up and tossed in the trash? Even if those circumstances make a person uncomfortable, where is the same vitriol directed at athletes who are kneeling in their Constitutionally-protected right to protest?
Think about it.