Memorial Day, the Flag and the NFL By Hank Silverberg I put the flag up on the pole outside my home this Memorial Day weekend. I don’t fly the flag every day, just on significant holidays like Memorial Day, Veterans Day, July 4th, Labor Day and Election Day. (My flagpole) It is not the flag that I am honoring right now, though. It’s the thousands of men and women who gave what Lincoln called their “last full measure of devotion” for what the flag stands for—Freedom. M emorial Day honors combat war dead, from Robert Munroe, one of eight who died at the Battle of Lexington in 1775, to 22-year-old Army Specialist Gabriel Conde of Loveland, Colorado, who was killed last month in Afghanistan. As Lincoln said at Gettysburg when dedicating the 1863 battlefield, “it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.” The flag is, though, just a piece of cloth. The republic for which it stands is one of the greatest endeavors