Flying high on patriotism

VENTNOR, N.J. - Even at the Shore, where people feel very strongly about flying the flag near the beach - the Shore is where, after all, America begins, at least geographically, where locals still remember the Army patrolling the Boardwalk during wartime - this flag stands out.

First of all, it's big. And the flagpole is at the edge of Mel Rosenberg's beachfront property at Stratford Avenue, so with a wind from the bay, the flag literally flies over the Boardwalk.

Like halfway over.

"It's crazy, huge," an admiring Christian Bergman, 15, said the other day, sitting on a bench nearby with his mother. Their walks, like a lot of people's, have their turnaround at the flag, an unmissable landmark.

One year, Rosenberg, 65, went a little nuts over the whole size thing and got an even bigger flag, 20 feet by 30 feet, for his 40-foot pole. That was so big that bicyclists got tangled up in it, and Rosenberg had to take it to a tailor to get it shortened. Seriously.

"Betsy Ross was a tailor," he said, defending the hem job on the stripes. "She made a lot of them."

In any case, much better that than a flag-bicyclist mishap and a lawsuit is what he thought. Plus, in the rain, the flag was like a wet towel reaching out and whipping around. That flag would pretty much be a canopy over the Boardwalk when the wind was right. You could get married under that flag with a steady land breeze.

So the next year, it was back to its current size, 18 feet by 25 feet, which is still quite larger than the government recommended size of 6-by-10 for the 40-foot-pole.

Now the flag is big enough to be quite stirring, not so big as to trip up a child on a tricycle. The flag is replaced every year. "It's the perfect size," said his son, Larry Rosenberg, 40, who works in the family jewelry business on Sansom Street in Philadelphia and lives in Bala Cynwyd. "Look at the way it moves with the wind. How can an American flag be too big? An American flag?"

Naturally, there are a few people who look at that humongous flag on the edge of that fancy beachfront property and imagine someone who wants to make an in-your-face statement, no matter what it is. Someone who will stick a big American flag in your face while you're taking a run on the Boardwalk. Someone for whom even a flag is not immune from ostentatiousness.

But those people do not know the story of these Rosenbergs, dating back to Howard J. Rosenberg, a World War I Navy veteran torpedoed in the Atlantic.

This family comes by its outsize patriotism honestly. The flag that draped Howard Rosenberg's coffin after he died in 1980 at age 83 is now buried in front of the Shore house on Stratford Avenue, which was also notable in its history for the farm, now a lawn, that once occupied the land between the house and the Boardwalk.

Howard Rosenberg was as big a patriot as they come. "This was it for him," Larry Rosenberg said of his grandfather's devotion to the country he immigrated to from Germany in the late 1800s. Uncle Stanley and Aunt Shirley Goldstein, in their 80s, get very emotional over the flag.

"Something in our generation doesn't understand," Larry said.

In truth, the flag took some getting used to, even for the Rosenbergs. The first year after they bought the house, in 1998 (don't even ask what they paid, let's just say it was a good deal, under $300,000 for beachfront - this is a great country), they flew the flag. Lots of people do at the Shore, where beach season is, after all, defined by flag-flying holidays.

"I drove up and said, 'What is this, the Pentagon or a car dealership?' " said Larry's wife, Iris Rosenberg. "We were cracking up."

The flag is perhaps best viewed from the Rosenbergs' porch, where the full length of the pole can be seen, and where the backdrop is the sky and the ocean.

But Mel Rosenberg likes the idea of children on the beach turning around and being reminded of their country, and of someone's unmitigated desire to express their love of it.

Plus, he likes more than just the sight of it:

"People say how beautiful it is, and start thinking about what it represents, but it's the sound of it. It puts you in a different place when you're by the ocean. You hear the sound of the ocean and the sound of the flag, and you really start thinking about America. I didn't go to college. I started working at Gimbels for $2 an hour at Cottman Avenue. It makes me very, very proud of America."

"I think you look at this big flag and you might think, 'Oh, it's obnoxious,' but it's not and they're not," said Rita Moore, a Realtor and faithful daily walker who loves the flag.

"It gives you a sense, when you're walking, it gives you that feeling," said her walking partner, Zelda Soloff.

Last year, some veterans gave Mel Rosenberg a POW-MIA flag and he agreed to fly it. They give him advice on proper illumination (there's a street lamp nearby) and keep watch that it doesn't get tattered.

He also got an Israeli flag this year, mostly to make his new Israeli girlfriend happy and to show his pride in his heritage, which as a boy got him beaten up on the streets of Mayfair, although international convention does say one nation's flag should not be flown beneath another's on the same pole.

Elaine Jaffe, the neighbor right behind Rosenberg on Stratford, said she loves the flag as part of her view (she cannot say the same for the manmade dunes, which block her view of the waves). "It's big, bold and in your face," she said, "and sometimes you need to be like that, especially in America today."

"It feels good," said Mel Rosenberg. "Watching it shimmer, with the water behind it. No smokestacks. People on the Boardwalk, they turn around, it makes me feel good. The joggers meet under the flag. In Philadelphia, it's 'let's meet at the eagle.' When you're down the Shore, it's 'let's meet at the big flag.' "