The name “Old Glory” was first applied to the U.S. Flag by a young sea captain who lived in Salem, Mass. On his 21st birthday, March 17, 1824, Capt. William Driver was presented a beautiful flag by his mother and group of Salem girls. Driver was delighted with the gift. He exclaimed, “I name her Old Glory.” Then Old Glory accompanied the captain on his many voyages.

Capt. Driver quit the sea in 1837. He settled in Nashville, Tenn. On patriotic days, he displayed Old Glory proudly from a rope extending from his house to a tree across the street.

After Tennessee seceded from the Union in 1861, Capt. Driver hid Old Glory by sewing the flag inside a comforter. When Union soldiers entered Nashville on Feb. 25, 1862, Driver removed Old Glory from its hiding place. He carried the flag to the state capitol building and raised it.

Shortly before his death, the old sea captain placed a small bundle into the arms of his daughter. He said to her “Mary Jane, this is my ship flag, Old Glory. It has been my constant companion. I love it as a mother loves her child. Cherish it as I have cherished it.”

The flag remained as a precious heirloom in the Driver family until 1922.

Then it was sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where it is carefully preserved under glass today.

Freedom is Not Free

I watched the flag pass one day,
it fluttered in the breeze.
A young airman saluted it,
and then, he stood at ease.

I looked at him in uniform
so young, so tall, so proud-,
with hair cut square and eye alert
he’d stand out in any crowd.

I thought how many men like him
had fallen through the years?
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mothers’ tears?

How many pilots’ planes shot down?
How many died at sea?
How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves?
No, freedom is not free.

I heard the sound of “Taps” one night,
when everything was still.
I listened to the bugler play,
and felt a sudden chill.

I wondered just how many times that “Taps” had meant “Amen” when a flag had covered a coffin of a brother or a friend.

I thought of all the children,
of all the mothers, and the wives,
of the fathers, sons, and husbands,
with interrupted lives.

I thought about a graveyard,
at the bottom of the sea,
of the unmarked graves at Arlington.
No, freedom is not free.