It has been more than a year since the Times Union reported the regulations change at Our Lady of Angels Cemetery in Colonie ("At a cemetery, the regulations can be final, too," May 12, 2011). Those rules restrict the placement of flags, or anything else, on grave sites. Nothing has changed.
My father-in-law took up arms so that we could be free. He served on a Navy destroyer escort and saw his share of combat.
Before the new rules, his family honored his memory by placing a flag in a planter on his grave before Memorial Day and leaving it up through July 4, Sept. 11 and Veterans Day. This planter, filled with live flowers, is on the monument itself, and the flag is 40 inches above the ground. It could not possibly have interfered with mowing or landscaping. Cemetery officials removed the flag shortly after Memorial Day and also a replacement flag right after July 4. A flag was again placed in the flag holder Nov. 9 and it was removed within 24 hours, meaning it didn't even make it to Veterans Day.
It's time for the cemetery rule makers to reconsider priorities and treat our veterans with respect.
Families purchased those burial spaces because of the way the cemetery was, not for the way it is today.
HERBERT W. REILLY JR.
Voorheesville