Silence Isn’t Just Golden--It’s Red, White and Blue Too

For oldsters who wonder whether any youngsters still care about flag and country, we offer up Andrew Lithgoe of Laguna Niguel--student, marching band member and not yet 17.

We should say up front that, according to Andrew himself, there’s nothing extraordinary about him. He considers himself a “normal” high school kid who watches TV sports on weekends and isn’t sure what he wants to be. He lives with his mom and dad, is the middle son of three boys and competes on the swim and water polo teams for Dana Hills High School.

That pretty much brings us up to Homecoming 10 days ago, when Dana Hills took on Mission Viejo. The marching band, in which Andrew plays the saxophone, had finished its pregame routine and scrambled into the stands. Next up was the school choir, assigned to sing the national anthem.

Andrew is the type who puts his hand over his heart when the anthem is played. He considers himself mainstream when it comes to patriotism, saying he doesn’t consider himself any kind of superpatriot.

But he does have his standards. And one of them is that people should at least be quiet for the two or three minutes it takes to hear the anthem and acknowledge the flag.

“When I see people not doing that, it gets to me,” he said.

On Homecoming Night, someone got to him. She was another band member who wound up a couple seats away from Andrew as he turned toward the end zone to acknowledge the flag.

As the choir began singing, the girl began talking. Andrew says she wasn’t talking to anyone in particular; she was engaged in a monologue that, from what he could hear, revolved around her disinclination to be quiet during the anthem.

We’ve all heard people like that. I hear people yakking during the anthem all the time at sporting events. I never say anything to them.

Young Andrew is of a different stripe. After hearing other students tell the girl to pipe down, to no avail, he acted.

He turned around to face her, he said, and sternly told her to be quiet. Then, in what he said was a reflex action, he extended his left hand and clamped it over the girl’s mouth.

He held it there for a few seconds, as the startled student realized he meant business. “I let go, and she did quiet down after that.”

This may not be the equivalent of Horatius at the bridge, but it struck me as a modestly heroic act. As with all heroes, Andrew had the choice of doing nothing and chose to do something instead.

This past Friday, a week after the incident, I asked Andrew why he did what he did.

“I think I’m living in one of the greatest countries,” he told me in the living room of the family home. “It provides for all citizens the best it can, better than any other country on Earth. I think saluting the flag is one of the minimal things you can do to show how you feel about it. I don’t think it’s asking that much.”

Had the girl chosen to show her lack of appreciation by sitting down or in some other silent manner, he wouldn’t have done anything, Andrew said. What made him act was her incessant chatter.

“After the choir finished the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ I turned to her and said, ‘You never talk when we honor the flag.’ She protested a little then, and then went and told the drum major. She was pretty upset.”

The drum major, a junior like Andrew, tried to play peacemaker.

“He called me over behind the bleachers and told me I should apologize for what I did,” Andrew said. “I said no, I felt what I did was right. I said she should not be doing that. For two or three minutes, we went back and forth.”

That’s where things ended. Andrew hasn’t seen the girl since (“I think she’s a freshman”) and has no plans to seek her out. Because band members normally sit near those who play the same instrument--and Andrew and the girl don’t--it’s unlikely they’ll be sitting near each other again, he said.

That night, Andrew wrote a letter to The Times. With the presidential election just a few days away at that point, he began like this:

“Patriotism should thrive about now. It is time that we the people decide who is most qualified to lead us. It is this democracy alone that makes our country so great, which I am proud of, even though I am too young to vote. It is this democracy that will forever overpower any corruption within our government. It is this democracy that stabilizes America and gives to her people what they need. . . . “

He went on to explain what happened in the stands and why he acted.

Any second thoughts, I asked him last week.

“No,” he said. “I was kind of upset that people would show that much disrespect for the flag, which represents our country. It’s just not something you should do.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.