Up the Flagpole

When Gary Wardrip used an American flag to partition the rear of his minibus, police in Hartford City, Ind., arrested him for flag desecration. Wardrip, 21, a shaggy-haired TV assembly-line worker, pleaded guilty and then learned he faced the possibility of a $1,000 fine. However, Judge Keith Rees said that he wanted Wardrip, instead of paying a fine, to stand holding a flag outside city hall for three hours.

A crowd of townspeople, including several sporting American Legion hats, gathered for his public penance. A few shook his hand. Some shook their heads. "It was like the old days when they slapped you in the stocks," Wardrip recalled. After an hour, he could take no more and pleaded with the judge, "I don't care what happens. I can't face the people outside." Judge Rees relented, but insisted that he finish the three hours holding the flag in a closed courtroom.

"It tore me down--and my family," says Wardrip. He claims, however, that he left the flag hanging in his bus "to show my patriotism--honest. I dig the flag." Unmoved, Judge Rees stood by his sentence, the intent of which, he said, was "embarrassment." Rees certainly achieved that intent. But was using the flag as a partition a much greater desecration than using it as a means of embarrassing a U.S. citizen?

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