Flag Waves for the Troops--Until a Thief Takes It

While patriotism swells and yellow ribbons flutter all around them, Thomas and Anne Burke of La Verne are feeling a little left out.

Somebody stole the huge, 48-star American flag draped across their garage door.

In its place Thursday were angry signs reading: “Whomever stole our flag. Some Patriot!”

Tom Burke, who served in the Army during World War II and has two sons in the service, had been taking down the flag every night until Sunday, when he forgot about it until bedtime.

It would be safe for the night, thought Burke, reasoning that nobody would steal a flag. “Not around here,” he said.

Indeed. Patriotic feeling in La Verne is running so high that Councilman Craig Walters suggested this week that the city show its support for the troops by declaring itself a “Saddam-free zone.”

But despite such sentiments, La Verne police said there have been at least two other reported flag thefts in the city.

“I think it’s an outrage that people would do that,” Police Capt. D. F. Griggs said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials report scattered incidents of flag-stealing elsewhere, including the theft Wednesday of a 50-star flag in Bellflower. Sheriff’s deputies said someone stole the 6-by-10-foot flag from the front yard of Luann Marie Howe on Arkansas Street. Deputies said it had been given to her after the funeral in 1978 of her grandfather, a disabled veteran of World War II.

The flag stolen from the Burkes had belonged to a World War II soldier who was killed in an auto accident after he left the service in 1945. Anne Burke said it was given to her at the soldier’s military funeral.

“It was very precious to me,” she said.

As for the flag bandit, her husband said, “Whoever does something like that has to be lower than a snake.”