(VitalNews.org) – Officials at the Denali National Park in Alaska have been criticized after they told construction crews in the park not to fly the American flag.
Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska wrote to Charles Sams, the National Park Service Director, looking for an explanation on why the officials told the crew members this. He specifically noted that this was also done on the “eve of Memorial Day weekend.”
The claim was originally brought up in a report by the Alaska Watchman, which is a local conservative news outlet that got the statement from an anonymous construction worker at the site. In Sullivan’s letter he said that one of the construction vehicles had an American flag on it and that for “reasons that remain unclear, someone at the National Park Service caused the construction crew to remove the American flag.”
In the letter, Sullivan wrote, “This is an outrage – particularly in the lead-up to our most solemn national holiday, Memorial Day, a time when Americans come together to honor those that gave their lives in service to our nation while wearing our country’s flag.” He continued, “The American flag, especially on Memorial Day weekend, should be celebrated, not censored by federal government employees.”
The Alaskan senator said that he couldn’t find any regulations restricting the use of the American flag on public lands. Sullivan’s letter ended demanding that Sams look into the situation and “take steps to ensure an incident like this does not happen again in American national parks.”
A National Park Service official said that this situation never happened at all. The National Park spokesperson said, “Reports that a National Park Service official ordered the removal of an American flag from a Denali bridge construction worker’s vehicle at Denali National Park are false,” said Peter Christian in a statement.
He continued, “At no time did an NPS official seek to ban the American flag from the project site or associated vehicles.”
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