Faced with outraged veterans, the Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation struck its colors Thursday, keeping the patriotic from becoming idiotic.

        The department had been threatening to discipline a group of corrections officers unless they started wearing a patch the officers believed improperly displayed the American flag.

        “It may seem like a real nit-pickety issue, but all they're trying to do is represent the flag properly,” said Craig Bradford, head of AFSCME Local 11, representing the officers at Lima Correctional Institution.

        This all started last fall, in the wake of the tragedy of Sept. 11, when somebody in the DOC suggested that it would be patriotic to add an American flag patch to corrections officers' uniforms. The idea was greeted with favor by the officers, many of whom are veterans. So patches were ordered and each officer was given five, to be sewn on the right shoulders of their uniform shirts.

        Flag etiquette says that when the flag is displayed horizontally, the blue field should be on the upper left. The U.S. military allows two exceptions — displaying the flag on the right side of a vehicle and on the right shoulder of a uniform. In those cases, a “reversed field,” with the blue in the upper right hand corner, is permitted. This is done so it looks as though the flag is blowing in the wind caused by forward movement. You can check it out in the picture of Air Force 1 on the Web at www.ushistory.org, in the section on flag etiquette.

        Unfortunately this was a detail overlooked by the Department of Corrections when it ordered its patches. It was, however, noticed by officers at Lima, who happen to be veterans. These officers spent their own money to buy reversed field patches. Same size, same color — just mirror images of those provided by the state.

        It wasn't a big deal, said Mr. Bradford, who is not a veteran himself, but bowed to the sensibilities of his fellow officers who are. After all, some of these officers were veterans of Desert Storm and had been wearing such flags as unofficial adornments to their uniforms for a decade without ever hearing a peep from the department. On Dec. 12, the prison administration told the officers at Lima that whatever American flag patch they wanted to wear would be fine.

        But then some bureaucrat got officious. A directive was read at roll call saying only state-issued patches — the ones that the veterans say are backwards — would be permitted. Furthermore, according to the directive, anyone not wearing such a patch by last Monday would be docked two days' pay.

        Trying to head off a problem, Local 11 offered to buy five reversed field patches for each of the 321 corrections officers at Lima, Mr. Bradford said. He figured it would cost $1,800-$2,000. The department turned him down.

        Monday came and went, with about 30 of the Lima officers refusing to change their patches. Prison officials held off on the fines while considering the issue, Spokeswoman Andrea Dean said Wednesday. During that consideration, questions started coming into DOC headquarters and the governor's office. Veterans, VFW chapters, state legislators and members of the media wondered why the DOC wanted to punish officers who were serving their state, had served their country and just wanted to respectfully wear their nation's flag.

        Ms. Dean said nobody wanted to make a big deal out this, but the department wanted the uniforms to be, well, uniform. Nobody in the department meant any disrespect for the flag, but corrections officers aren't in the military and therefore aren't bound by military etiquette, she said. The Boy Scouts, she noted, wear flag patches on their right shoulders that don't have reversed fields.

        No offense to the Boy Scouts, responded Mr. Bradford, but that's not the organization the corrections officers belong to, either.

        On Friday, DOC Director Reginald Wilkinson recognized the absurdity of the situation. He issued a new directive allowing officers to wear whichever patch they prefer. “It is my hope that all uniformed staff will wear our uniform with pride in themselves, their department and their country,” he said.

        Good move. Nice sentiment. Not “nit-pickety” at all.

        Contact David Wells at 768-8310; fax: 768-8610; e-mail: dwells@enquirer.com. Cincinnati.Com keyword: Wells.

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