When you have a living thing that you can no longer keep, what do you do with it? 

Perhaps you have an unloved plant, or a tropical fish whose purchase was ill-considered.  What to do can be a real dilemma.  On the one hand, it’s alive, so you might feel it would be disrespectful to just discard it.  On the other, it may be in poor health and not suitable for a new owner.  

You would not think a tattered U.S. flag would be in this category, but it is.

The Flag Code, established in 1923, states that “the flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing.”  As such, we’re expected to be conscientious about how we dispose of flags no longer fit to fly.  

In 1937, the American Legion resolved that proper flag retirement requires destruction by burning.  However, the manner in which a flag is burned matters; if you do it wrong, you’ve violated a sacred American symbol.

Thankfully, most of us don’t worry about conducting our own flag retirement ceremonies because there are organizations that have taken this upon themselves, such as the VFW.  The main challenge, then, is figuring out where to drop off your old flag.

The City of Kalona has accepted old flags at City Hall, but will now make dropping off your flags even more convenient with a new drop box to be located near the city offices, somewhere in the vicinity of the fire station and the post office.

“We would put it off to where people would have to get out of their vehicle to use it so they don’t accidently use it to pay their water bill,” City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh said.  

The new drop box does bear a resemblance to a post office box where you would mail your letters, although it is somewhat different in style.  

“We tried to get an old post office box that we were going to have painted, and we exhausted all our efforts to do that,” Schlabaugh noted.  The new box, which City Clerk Sarah Schmelar and Utility Clerk Heather Trimpe decorated with graphics, turned out better than expected.

The city does receive enough old flags to warrant the new box.

“Right now we actually use one of the old red and green recycling containers that we all used to use,” said Matt Jacoby of Public Works. “We have some of those at the shop, and as people give us flags, or the ones that we have, out of the five or six that we put up, as they get torn and tattered, then we fold them up as best we can.  Basically, once we get something full, we just take it out and drop it off [at the Richmond VFW].”

“It’s a neat thing,” Schlabaugh said of the new box.  The city hopes that people will take advantage of it once it is installed.