Today is Flag Day. We have every reason to celebrate this powerful symbol in our lives.

The flag is precious, proudly displayed outside our homes and businesses and revered worldwide for what it represents: freedom that was secured by pure human diligence, sacrifice and loss.

It is right and just that we celebrate our national treasure.

It brings up a strong feeling when we see current military or veterans salute Old Glory or when we hear:

And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

The words to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” written by Francis Scott Key, fit Flag Day perfectly and provide for many of us a sense of dignity and solace in these traumatic times.

According to USHistory.org, in May 1776, Betsy Ross reported that she sewed the first American flag. The flag she created was patterned closely on the Grand Union flag (with Continental colors) displayed in early January that year on Prospect Hill (now Prospect Hill Park) in Somerville, Mass., with 13 alternate red and white stripes and the British Union Jack in the upper left-hand corner.

But more than a piece of cloth, Old Glory brings tears to many of our eyes. It is a powerful symbol of American unity despite the harshest of times.

Why do we call it Old Glory?

According to the Smithsonian Magazine, during the Civil War, “no flag became a more popular symbol of Union loyalty than the worn and imperiled standard belonging to 19th-century sea captain William Driver, who was originally from Salem, Mass. His defiant flying of it — from his Nashville, Tenn., household in the midst of the conflict — made national news.”

Driver started flying the flag, a gift from his mother, in 1824. The flag celebrated his appointment, at age 21, to master mariner and commander of his own ship, the Charles Doggett.

According to legend, when Driver first raised the flag up the main mast, he lifted his hat and declaimed, “My ship, my country and my flag, Old Glory.”

The flag we display today was adopted nationwide in 1960, a flag with 50 stars after Hawaii was made a state on Aug. 21, 1959.

There’s no denying the emotion we display when we see the flag, on this, a special day and every day.

— AA