I ran across this story on my Facebook feed. I remembered the picture after I returned from Desert Storm. I thought it was an iconic pic from that time and this is the backstory on it.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — As Matt Miller settled under a walkover to the beach at Mayport Naval Station,
he apologized to the folded American flag he had carried with him to
get to this resting place. It was a cold, misty March night, and he
would need to use it as a blanket. Just until first light, just until he
could carry out his mission.
He was awakened at 6 a.m. by the rumbling and rattling of a white
pickup truck on the road nearby. Military police? No, just someone going
by with fishing poles.
Miller refolded the flag, picked up the two pieces of his flagpole and
resumed his mission, walking north up the beach. He was nervous: He
didn't have permission for what he was about to do, and he feared
someone would see him and stop him.
But no one did, so when he reached the big rocks that form the St. Johns River
south jetty, he climbed up and started making his way east, into the
Atlantic. About 200 yards (182 meters) out, he found the right spot to
fulfill his mission: A huge boulder with a natural wide ledge on it. He
settled down on the ledge and waited for the USS Saratoga to finally
come home from war.
So he was ready several hours later when the aircraft carrier loomed
into view, growing impossibly gigantic, a floating city whose thousands
of residents manned the rails, with hands folded behind their backs.
Miller, on his ledge out in the ocean, stood as tall as he could. He
thrust his right hand into the air as if in greeting, or triumph. In his
left hand he held aloft his flagpole, and an east wind unfurled the
American flag on it, stretching it out to its full length and width.
Snap.
In a helicopter flying just to the south, Florida Times-Union
photographer Dennis Hamilton Jr. captured the moment with his camera. It
was an iconic tableau: the Saratoga and its sailors at parade rest, two
Coast Guard escorts, a seabird just in the frame, a wave peeling off the jetty toward the beach.
And there on the rocks, a single figure, waving the American flag.
The photo was taken March 20, 1991, and the Saratoga was coming back to
its home port after almost eight months in the Persian Gulf during the
first Iraq war.
In a Navy town, the Saratoga's homecoming was a big deal. At Mayport,
30,000 people waited to greet the crew and the newspaper had rented a
helicopter so that Hamilton, a staff photographer, could get aerial
shots of the carrier as it neared the jetties. As the helicopter
followed the ship in, Hamilton saw the man with the flag on the rocks.
Can you go lower, he asked the pilot.
He could, and Hamilton got his shot. In those pre-digital days he
couldn't immediately see what he had, but he figured this was going to
be good.
"You see it through the lens and you think this looks like a good A1
photo, but you never know until you get back and run the print," said
Hamilton, who left the paper in 2001. Indeed, the photo was worthy of
A1, and ran across the entire front page. It was also turned into a
popular poster.
The image has long outlasted that day's news cycle: When Miller meets
someone with a connection to the Saratoga, they usually remember that
photo. There are many in Jacksonville, still, who have that connection.
After all, the aircraft carrier spent 37 years at Mayport, the only home
port it knew, and thousands served aboard it at any one time, and many
of them had families with them.
"They know the picture," Miller says. "They just don't know me."
Miller is 60 now, and on a recent hot morning he drove to Mayport Naval
Station, carrying that same flag with him. He wore a teal Jaguars Nick
Foles number 7 jersey and a Saratoga cap given him by a Saratoga veteran
after Miller told him he was that guy in the photo.
This time he didn't have to sneak onto the base: The Navy had readily
agreed to allow him to visit the Saratoga's nameplate. At 16 feet (4.8
meters) long and 3 feet (0.91 meters) high, it is just about all of what
remains of the carrier, which was decommissioned in 1994 and then
scrapped.
Miller took the folded flag and touched it to each of the black letters
that spelled out the ship's name. He paused in prayer, then broke into
big smile.
Over and over, he said how amazed he was that this was happening, how humbled he was to be there.
And he told his story of that day 28 years ago: How he parked at an
Atlantic Beach condominium at 3 a.m., how he left a palm frond on the
beach to show him the way back, how he took the long walk by the ocean,
fearing that he would be stopped, how he rested near the jetty, wrapped
in the flag for warmth.
"I did ask the flag for forgiveness," he said.
He had not thought everything out: He'd brought a sandwich with him,
but ate it too soon, and he forgot to carry water, so his thirst grew.
And he stumbled over a few times on the slimy rocks of the jetty — quick
violent falls.
He had not counted on his mission making the front page, had not
figured that anyone other than the sailors on the carrier would see what
he had done. But that photo clearly means a lot to Miller, who carries
prints of it with him most places he goes. He gives them to Desert Storm
veterans he encounters or to those who served on the Saratoga.
He knew thousands would be at the base on that March day to greet the
Saratoga, but he wanted his flag to be the one the sailors saw first.
Several times he said he felt as if God was calling him to do it, to
take the flag through the night to the jetty. "All glory goes to God,"
he said.
As for himself? Miller says he was just someone who was at the right time and the right place, doing the right thing.
I remember that picture, and the appreciation from the folks I knew on the Sara.
ReplyDeleteI remember that time, even though I was somewhere else. One of the coolest things I got to do in submarines was to take our boat in (USS Francis Scott Key, SSBN-657) to Port Canaveral within a few days of this event, as JOOD. At least at that time, there was an RV park on the south side of the jetty and we steamed on past a bunch of folks in the RV park cheering us on, less than a hundred yards away. Great time to have been in the USN.
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