Flag Day event honors

Jim Adams delivers an address to the crowd during a Flag Day ceremony conducted at the Nevada Elks Lodge on Thursday.

By Steve Moyer

Nevada Daily Mail

"Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

The citizens of Nevada know Jim Adams as an accomplished architect. He has been in the same location for more than 30 years.

What some may not know is that Adams was a helicopter pilot and platoon leader in Vietnam, during the Vietnam War.

Adams was the guest speaker Thursday at the Elks Lodge on Flag Day. The Elks have a long history of having veterans give a speech on Flag Day, a tradition that started in the early years of the 20th century. Last year, Sam Foursha, currently working for the State Department in Iraq, was the guest speaker.

Adams echoed the sentiment of the national anthem in parts of his remarks.

"We used the flag in many ways in Vietnam," Adams said. "We used to come in to firebases and we used the flag to tell which way the wind was blowing. It served us another way also. We could tell by whether the flag was flying if the firebase was in trouble. We would be coming in and we would look at the orange covered hilltop and look for the flag. I only saw a firebase once that was in trouble but the flag was still flying."

One of the first things Adams and his wife, Rama, did on opening his office in Nevada was to purchase a flag pole on which to display a flag.

"When we moved into the office 30 years ago, in 1976, without even talking about it between us, Rama and I bought a flagpole and set it up," Adams said.

Adams said it's offensive to him when people use the flag to promote their own agendas.

"I see a lot of people waving the flag, pushing their own ideas and I don't like it," Adams said.