Latest / OneLegUpAlex Media / One Leg Up On Flag Day With Tom Mcmillan 6-14-24
Transcript
- Hey, it's Alex Garrett. And on this Flag Day, I just want to say this. I pray that each and every day our leaders in America make sure our flag is still there through their leadership and the shout out to those citizens who do their best to represent what that flag stands for in their own communities. And of course today is the US Armies, I believe, two hundred and forty ninth birthday, and they're hard work to protect this country and fight for that flag as we celebrate their birthday today should not go unnoticed. Thank you to all who stand with and fight for America and old glory this Flag Day twenty twenty four. Now here's my interview with Tom McMillan, author of Our Flag Was Still There. Well, you know, this show should really start with the Star Spangled banner, because yes, last week was Flag Day. But I believe and maybe my next guest believes as well, that in a very patriotic month of June, you know it is Flag Day, there are some patriotic moments of this month, but the conversation about Flag Day shouldn't just end on Flag Day, and I want to start there with my next guest, Tom McMillan, who we'll get to his book on one second. But Tom, you've written about the oldest star spangled banner that's still around. Tell us what you've written. Yeah, the book, our flag was still there. I was just fascinated about the flag from Fort McHenry that our national anthem. Everybody knows that our national anthem was written about it, but pretty much when I looked at it, I think all people really know where Okay flew that when the battle Francisco Key saw I wrote a song. But that flag still exist two hundred and nine years later. It's at the Smithsonian, and I think people visited, and we just often, the way history is, we just know a snippet of it. I thought I was looking into it, that this is a fascinating story of the journey of that flag. When I get to the most famous flag in US history in those two hundred plus years, from Fort McHenry and Baltimore to the Smithsonian and all the ebbs and flows in between, and I got to ask you, how did you track this down? I mean, you weren't around in eighteen fourteen, but how did you track down the remainder of this beautiful story? Here? Yeah, Well, I went to the Fort mccinnary in Baltimore. They have good resources. The Smithsonian and DC was tremendous. They had about four hundred pages of research. I don't think many people have ever asked them for it. I was able to pour through that, and then I was really lucky and made it really personalities because I was able to track down some direct descendants of George Armistead, who was the commander at Fort McHenry and the guy who thought of the flag and actually took it home after the battle, kind of in violation of army regulations, but he took it home and it remained in the possession of that family for ninety years, which is one of the reasons that exists today. So those family members had some tidbits and photos and really interesting things that made it personal for me. It was a patriotic journey for me. That was cool. So Port mckenry, Smithsonian National Archives and family descendants to and Tom McMillan, he is the author of our flag, was still there. The star spangled banner that survived the British in two hundred years and the Armistev family. Now we'll get to the armistev family a little more. But people may say, well, why are you doing this a week after Flag Day? But a story like this, it just shows that the American history continues even after one day year, right absolutely, and you know, and we're patriotic in the fourth of July, and this battle at Fort McHenry when Key saw the flag was actually in September September thirteenth and fourteenth, over the morning the fourteenth. So this is a why you know, spreading story, and the journey of the flag isn't just one day either. I mean a lot of the book is how and why it survived, the rather incredible story that so when you go to the Smithsonian today and you see it, I hope if people read it to appreciate everything that all the people who were involved to get it here over those those centuries that we can still look at it. And it's really dramatic when you see it, when you see it in the museum, when you say spread out, no kidding, there are more than eight feet of material aka the largest American flag during the War of eighteen twelve cut into small pieces. Now is it non American? Too? Would this be considered desecrating the flag by cutting into pieces. Give us your thoughts on well, it would have been yet part of the story. Again, there are different traditions in different centuries. We have to put ourselves back at that time. Yeah, for the listeners, the flag originally was thirty feet by forty two feet huge flag at the SMITHSONI. It's now thirty by thirty four it's eight feet shorter. It's because in the mid eighteen hundreds, the Armistead ladies, his wife and his daughter would do something that would because as you said, would be considered sacrilegious to us today, but was commonplace back then. They would cut off pieces of the flag and give them as souvenirs to battle veterans, maybe their families, bignitary's in Baltimore, and over several decades they cut away eight feet I was talking to one of the archivists at the Smithsonian and she said, yeah, you know, we would be aghast at that today. You could not do that today, But back then, in the eighteen hundreds, that's what you did. So they cut away pieces of the flag, and some of those have been returned to the SMITHSONI. They have some of those pieces available as well, but some of them are still in homes and little museums around the country. Tell us about that. Where does the flag live today? At the National Museum of American History, Washington, DC with the Smithsonian actually about fifty eight loose track of time. In the early sixties, the Smithsonian itself was just one museum back then. Now it's multiple, but it was just one museum and everything was getting cluttered, and they decided back then that they would create a museum just for American history, and they built it around the Star Spangled banner. Flag Hall was on the second floor, and it's still there on the second floor. They did a massive renovation about fifteen years ago, in two thousand and eight. It's really dramatic the way they've done it, because you have to take care of that textile that's two hundred and nine years old. They had to do a lot of work on it. But it's still there. So people, you know, in those museums in DC are free. People go in every day. And I went down there several times, and sometimes you know, when you're right, you get writer's block. And I live in Pittsburgh, but if I got that, I would drive down to DC and go see it and I was inspired just by looking at it and thinking, you know, nobody's really told this story beginning to end. I want to be the one who's able to tell the story. Well, it seems like this is the flag that the rocket drag lair bombs versing in the air were reflecting. And I got to ask you, where are the descendants of Armistead that talked to you? How did you get this behind the scenes look if you will, Yeah, well I did. I cold wrote them letters. I did some research. You can find a lot of things on ancestry dot com, and I just cold wrote them letters, explained to them who I was and what I was doing. And they were extremely gracious. Some folks in Philadelphia and some folks in Florida. They were excited that someone was talking about it, and they had me to their homes and they provided They were very very grace, provided some photos for the book, provided some documents. Actually, because of this, Alex, one of the things I'm proudsed of a little side view here, is because of the research, I was able to put some of them in touch with the people at the Smithsonian and they have donated several of George Armistead's items now to the Smithsonian that they were in their home had he had in his home. I saw them in Philadelphia. They had his original US Army commissions that were signed by John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. They were in their home and they had an eighteen sixteen painting of him and those things. Now, the Smithsonian was very excited, and the Armistic has decided, you know, we have these in our home. It's nice, but if we give it to the Smithsonian, we know it'll be preserved for all times. So the Smithsonian authenticated those pieces and they have now been donated down there. So it's kind of a cool little thing for me as an author. It wasn't the purpose of the book, but because of that I was able to put those two together, and those items are not will now be available to the American public. I gotta ask you this because you know, we just kind of went out the gate here about the flag. But you are Tom McMillan, and for those who are just listening to the show for the first time, listening to you for the first time, give us some insight into who Tom McMillan is. You are a historian and an author. Yes, I actually just retired from my profession, which was in sports media and communications. Believe they or not. I was a writer and a broadcaster, and then I worked as VP of Communications for the Pittsburgh Penguins of the NHL for twenty five years. But history was always my passion, and my wife and I volunteer at historic sites. And as I got on in years, I thought I can write a little bit. I'll try to write some books. And this is actually my fourth book. I wrote one on Flight ninety three, the September eleventh flight that crashed. I live in Pittsburgh, so best about one hundred miles from where I live. In two on the Battle of Gettysburg. I'm a total Civil War nerd. But this one there's an Armistead family member who's famous at Gettysburg, who was involved in Pickett's charge. And by researching that book is when I really stumbled across some of this information and I thought, this is the kind of story that I want to do. So the sports media and communications was my profession, but history and history writing is my hobby and will continue to be so, all right, loll sign note Because my dad raised me in sports and we were at let me use what we thought was his last game against the Rangers back at the Igloo years ago or so. So there's a lot of history there, how about that. Yes, So when you know about Penguin's history, I got to ask you. I mean, twenty five years you saw them win the Cup with Crosby and we'll see they've kind of waned a little bit here. But are they going to be a force this season? Yeah? Well it's you know, there's an ebb and flow of sports. They have have beaten back the curve because they made the playoffs for sixteen straight years. This past year was the first year they missed in seventeen years. That's almost impossible to do. You can't in the salary cap area you were, It's really hard to do that. So just that sustaining excellence for that long, I mean, you can't stay on top forever. But Crosby and Malkin and Tang are still here and there's a new GM, so they're gonna they're gonna try to retool and take another run. But it has really been a golden era and I was very privileged to have a front row view with those Limoux teams which I covered for the Pittsburgh Postnett and then the Crosby teams, which I where I was involved as an executive. To be part of those Stanley Cups one of some of the great memories of my life. Obviously, it's amazing that I brought you on talking about the American flag, and here we are talking about the Penguins, but I've kind of had a bit of a history with them as well. And of course McCutcheon now and Pittsburgh the Pirates have come along now this year as well. We'll ob to see what happens there. Yeah, it's it's a good sports town. And it was an easy if you love sports, which I did, and loved writing, which I did, it was easy to get motivated to get into that kind of career. But Alex I, when they would say ask you this history stuff, I would say, for most people, sports is their escape from their real job, their escape from their life. And I say, when you work in sports, you need an escape permit. And his So history was my sports. That's what I did in my downtime, and it was a love of history for many many years before I started writing that that led to this and now in retirement, this is really what I'm doing, and to tell this story, you know, be able to tell this patriotic story. I try to, you know, touch stories that maybe haven't been told before, and this was one that really hadn't been in And I think you appreciate to as a history lover. At least half the fun is the research and learning and then you have to sit down and write. But I learned so much myself writing this book, and I was I'm a pretty good student of history, and I was astounded how little I knew about this flag story. So I thought, yeah, obviously, not every day you get to go into an army base and a fort. So is Fort McHenry the only base you've been to? Oh? No, I mean it's Fort mcchinery is essentially a national park. It's part of the National Park Service. So I had visited there plenty of times before. Uh, just through my life, whenever you're in Baltimore, I always went to Fort McHenry, not never thinking I was going to write a book. So it's a it's a special place because the walls of the fort are still there. I mean you can stand there and look out on the water in Baltimore Harbor and almost you can see where key ship was and imagine what was happening that day, and the big flag flag flies over the fort. So it's, uh, you know, it's a former military base, but now it's you know, they call it a National Historic Site, but it's basically run by the National Park Service free to the public. There's no charge to go to Fort mc County as a historic site, though I know they can't really change much. I mean I don't ever get into the base or now. But are there relics from the base that you can see at the park. Well, the outer walls of the fort are still there now selling the bad that have been prepared over the years. Again, the fourth continued in existence after the War of eighteen twelve. It was pretty much a Union prison. During the Civil War, the Federal Army used it and was used into the eighteen hundreds. But yeah, the hour structure of the fort is still there, and they have the guns placed or replica guns obviously placed where those guns used to be. So it's set up. It's set up the way it looked during the battle in September of eighteen fourteen that Key would have seen from the water, So you really get it's kind of an eerie feeling when you go there. They've done a great job of preserving They know where the footprint is of the fort, and so the visitor center is off a little bit over and they always have a flag raising ceremony every day. The flag there, the idea of the flag is really the focus of what they do with the programming. All right, well, I got to ask you this. Do you know how they folded this huge American flag at the end of the day even though there was no battle, because obviously that's a big part of the military. Is the folding of the flag, that taking it down at the end of the day type of ceremony it is. I'm not sure. I'll tell you. I don't know the details about that. From the early eighteen hundreds, my guess is they weren't as precise as they are now. I think those I think those traditions and regulations developed over time. Remember the War of eighteen twelve was only was only thirty six years after the declaration of independence. I mean, we were still a really young country and here we are at war with England again. So I think, you know, the country was just in its embryonic stages. Both governmentally and traditional wise. Don't really sure, but I don't think it was as precise back then as it is now. Certainly now they are very precise regulations of of what you would do with the flag. So this flag, it's part of this two hundred and nine year old flag that he saw, I mean, part of it was the armist Dead Ladies and in his descendant did protect it. But there were times, there were months when it was just rolled up and put us a canvas sack. They didn't have the technology or the knowledge of flag preservation that we did today, so they probably did some things and ended up causing some damage, but they wouldn't have known that they didn't have that information. They did the best they could, and they certainly did well enough that the flag survived. And then it's had two major rehab projects, one of the early nineteen hundreds and one of the early two thousands, and now they're convinced that it's going to exist for many, many decades, if not centuries, into the future. All Right, I got to ask you this, Tom, because obviously you say, of documents and letters, do we get to see the words of Georgia Armistead and the plans of him unfolding in this book. Thank you. Oh absolutely, I get into his It was a distinguished military family. Armisteads had been in some sort of the military since the year sixteen eighty back in Virginia. He and three of his brothers were professional US Army officers. So yes, he took over the fort in eighteen thirteen, a year before the battle. That's when he ordered the flag. So we do the build up. The war is going on, but it hasn't come down to Baltimore. So yes, that whole summer they know the British are coming, they don't know exactly when, really, And then I have I was able to obtain his post battle report that he wrote maybe ten days after the battle, where he describes what happens, and I quote that extensively. Sometimes you don't want to use long quotes in your books, you want to write around it. But I thought that stuff was so important that I wanted to let his words tell that story rather than mine. So those things, you know, we're available. It's a little easier to do research now with the internet. You can go online, but not a lot of people have seen them. And and so I think some of the information even though it's two hundred years old, is really going to be new to a lot of a lot of readers who again just know kind of the really top line of this story at Fort mcchennery with Francis Scott Key, Well, why I love this month because not only a flag day, but I believe it's the birthday of the army. I mean, there's a lot going on as far as patriotic and I feel like you you probably touch on that as well. Yeah, the US Army was the Continental Congress formed the army in June of seventeen seventy five. That's when they appointed Washington in the first General. So it all it all ties in. There's there's there's a lot that happened when you look at this period of June and going to the first week of July with the July in the Battle of Gettysburg the first week of July. There's really a lot of American history that has happened in this three or four or five week period. Having said that, you can probably take any five week period and then you know, we have a lot of history in our country, but this is this is a I think a patriotic time and it was a nice time to focus on the flat you are a historian. Tell us about the other books you've written as well, just to get people up to speed on the work of Tom McMillon. I worked the first book, but I took a shot to try to do this could be successful. It was on Flight ninety three, the September eleventh flight where the passengers and crew fought back at drashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, which and my interest was we were all affected by nine to eleven, those of us alive at the time, but it was very I mean, it was only one hundred miles from Pittsburgh, so I would go out there and look at the site. And about ten years later, I'd realized, you know, there's been a lot written about what happened in New York and d C. But not much really written about Shanksville. And so I really wanted to dig into that flight, and I talked to some family members and it was quite an emotional journey to write that book, and that was my first one. It's still for sale and they have it at the Flight ninety three National Memorial. And then I ended up writing two books on the Battle of Gettysburg. Just always I've been studying Gettysburg for thirty years, went there as a kid. One was on five. Actually, there were five young men who grew up in Gettysburg and ended up fighting for the Confederate Army in the Battle of Gettysburg. They were foreign invangers in their hometown, and nobody had written that. So I called it the title, that is Gettysburg Rebels. And then I wrote another Gettyburg Armistead and Hancock. There's Armistead again. There was a Confederate general and a Union general, Lewis Armistead and Winfield Scott Hancock, very good friends before the war. Not only did they face each other in the war, they faced each other and pickets charge at Gettysburg. And just writing I thought that then encapsulized the whole history of the Civil War. You have these two guys who served together in the army as friends in the US Army, it bought together in the Mexican War, and here they are in the most famous attack of the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, facing each other, and they both were wounded by the others troops. So I do try to dig into some of these stories that in my old newspaper days would have been feature stories and on those uh so hopefully people who aren't even really into the total like deep history the Battle of Gettysburg or the War of eighteen twelve, this is a story that maybe you can enjoy. All Right. I got to ask you this because again, I'm a sports guy. So you went from the ice rink, the sport, you know, the ring, the skiing rink to maybe Gettysburg reenactment. Is that kind of the vibe I'm getting from you. I would they when and whenever the Penguin season ended, whether that was with a loss or a Stanley Cup. I the next weekend, I went to Gettysburg. That was That was how I I calmed down from the season. So yeah, I always uh it's it's only about three and a half hours from where I live, so it's it's an easy trip. It's always been a big part of my life. And that's why it's kind of interesting at the end now that I've figured out writing books, you know, to be able to write about and enjoy it that way, to do that research in it, and it actually there's a there's a productivity to it, and I want to keep going. But this book on the floor, I just came out. So I'm focused on this for a while and doing some interviews like this and podcasts and book talks and and it's it's a fun part of it getting out and meeting people and talk to them about this story. Again that a lot of them tell me I've already heard that they didn't know a lot about so that it's it's rewarding to know that you're providing some information that maybe people who are interested in history didn't know before. All Right, That leads me to my next question. I love how you set that up because I got to ask, and I've never really asked a historian this, but what's it mean to you to preserve the American history through your writing? Oh, it's it's it's I've had a great professional career, but this is the most rewarding part of my life. You leave a little bit of yourself and I've always loved American history so much, And now you're able to make You're able to make It's a very small contribution, but you're able to make a contribution and years from now, people you know, I always said sometimes in the modern context of you don't do the research now, we might not be able to find those things in fifty years. So you're also thinking, maybe no one would ever have looked at this star stangled banner story. Maybe no one would have looked at the Armistead family. I just kind of stumbled into it, and it is very rewarding. You don't it's a hobby for me. You don't do it. You might make a little bit of money, that's not your motivation. You do it because you love it and you can interact with people and see that they react to it. That's the best part of this. It's having people read it and learn and getting that feedback that keeps you going. All right, Then I got to ask you this, because obviously you've now covered Baltimore, You've covered Gettysburg. What about the history of the Steel City? Will you ever cover your hometown? I don't know. People have asked me that Pittsburgh. Who knows? I'm wide open. One thing I can't tell you, Alex, though. There are always people, especially friends and family members, you know, when they know you write books, say why do you write about this? Why don't you write about that? There have been a couple of ideas that I had that I started and I just didn't feel it even though it was interested in the topic. You really, it's a lot of work. It's fun, it's a hobby. I enjoy it, but it is a lot of work. It's a lot of time, and you have to love the story. And you kind of know that as soon as you're a little bit in, maybe a couple of chapters. And I've started a couple of books a couple of chapters. It's just field, right, So I think that's part of it. You have to love it, so you never know. The next book is never planned. I've always allowed myself to stumble onto these these other books, so we'll see what happens. There's still only a lot of history here in Pittsburgh, but there might just be something of of traveling for research that intrigues me too. So I'm I'm an open canvas on it. Well, have you ever come to New York Let us know. We'd love to talk with you more. One last thing, favorite rendition of the national anthem that I could play to end the segment today. You know, I just there are so many of them, so there have been so many great ones that it's forty events. You know, the Whitney Houston people talks about that talk about it. I just I like the straight, dramatic, patriotical I really do. People have had great versions of it, but just it's the it's the the song. When I hear the music and I think about the flag, that's what inspires me so well. I know there are some famous ones. I just like the you know, the basic, straightforward version of the anthem, the one I the one that I grew to NOA love as a kid. So I don't know if that's a that's a very exciting answer, but I just it makes me. It makes me stand at attention whenever I hear Tom McMillan, Thanks so much, and we'll definitely have you back on the Alex Garrett Podcast Network