How to Display a Folded Burial Flag with a Flag Case

Walt Nowak's flag came home from the funeral in mid January in the plastic sleeve the honor guard handed to Marge, and four days later it was still on her kitchen table exactly where they had set it down. She is 79. She had no idea what to do with it. Neither did I, and that is the honest reason this page exists.

A folded burial flag is a 5 by 9.5 foot cloth folded down into a triangle, and it does not hold that shape on its own for very long. It needs something solid under it. That is all a flag case is, a shallow triangle of engineered wood with a plexiglass front that holds the fold in place and keeps the dust off. I bought the Americanflat 5x9.5 Folded Flag Display Case in March, one for my father's flag and one for Marge, and the five steps below are what I actually did at my kitchen table. None of it takes skill.

What a Flag Case Does, and What It Does Not Do

A flag case holds the fold. That is the entire function. It does not preserve cloth the way a museum would, it does not make anything official, and it does not turn a funeral into a display. What it does is give a folded flag a place to sit where it can be seen and where nobody is going to set a grocery bag on top of it.

The second thing it does is make a decision visible. For sixteen years my father's flag lived in a dresser drawer in the spare room. Nobody was hiding it. It was simply easier to leave it where it was, and a drawer is very good at making a thing easy to leave alone. A case on a mantel ends that argument you keep having with yourself.

The third thing I did not expect. People ask about it. Two neighbors have asked me about the flag on the mantel since March, and both of them had a father or an uncle who served. Neither conversation happens with a flag in a drawer. If you want the flag to be part of the room, it has to be in the room.

One honest note on material, because it comes up at the table. The post has an oak display case in the hall for a charter flag, and it is heavier and darker than mine and somebody paid for that. Americanflat uses engineered wood. It is not oak and it does not pretend to be. What it does is hold a flag straight and keep the dust off, and I bought two of them without flinching.

Step 1: Look the Flag Over Before You Order Anything

Pull the flag out of the sleeve and lay it flat on a table in good light. You are checking two things. First, that it is dry and clean. A flag that has spent years in a damp basement or a hot attic will tell you, and putting a musty flag behind plexiglass does nobody any favors. Second, that it is a full 5 by 9.5 foot burial flag and not the small presentation flag from a desk set. The case is built for the size an honor guard folds at a funeral.

The fold itself should still be a clean triangle with the field, the blue part with the stars, showing on the outside. If it has come loose in storage it can be refolded, and a funeral director will do it in a couple of minutes without charging you for a lecture on the subject. Do not iron a fold into a flag. I have watched two grown men argue about that at a kitchen table and neither of them was right.

Measure the folded flag before you order anything. Americanflat sizes this case at 13.2 inches high, 26.4 inches wide and 3.3 inches deep, which is right for a 5 by 9.5 foot flag and not much else. A smaller flag will look lost inside it and a larger one will not seat without bulging the front. If yours is a different size, a shadow box is the better answer.

Step 2: Pick the Spot Before You Unpack the Case

I keep my father's flag on the brick mantel in the living room, where I see it every morning when I come down for coffee. Marge keeps Walt's on the bookcase in her front room. Both work. What does not work is deciding after the case is full, because by then you are carrying a loaded triangle around the house looking for somewhere to set it down.

Get a tape measure. At 26.4 inches wide this case is wider than most people picture when they order it, and it needs a real shelf under it, not the narrow top of a bookcase or the lip of a sideboard. I measured my mantel twice on a Tuesday before I opened the box, and I am glad I did, because the first spot I had in mind was six inches too short.

Think about light and traffic. Sun through a window all afternoon is hard on wool and on everything else, and a spot where people brush past with grocery bags is a spot where the case ends up crooked every week. A wall is a fine answer when the shelf space is not there. The Americanflat case is built for tabletop or wall, and the hanging hardware is in the box.

Step 3: Seat the Flag at the Kitchen Table

Do this somewhere flat with good light and nothing else going on. I used the kitchen table with a bath towel under the case so the frame did not get scratched on the wood. Ten minutes, start to finish. My father's flag had been in a drawer since 2009, so there was no practice run and no second flag to learn on.

The folded flag goes in the way it came out of the sleeve. Long edge along the bottom of the triangle, folded point at the top. Do not refold it tighter to make it fit and do not trim anything. It should go in with a little resistance and sit snug. If it drops in loose, the flag is smaller than the case was built for.

Keep your fingers off the inside of the plexiglass. Every print you leave in there stays in there, and you will see it from across the room the first time the light hits it at the wrong angle. If you do touch it, wipe it before the case is closed, with a soft cloth and not a paper towel.

The front is polished plexiglass, which is the part that keeps dust off the wool and the part that shows every handling mark. Work slowly, set the finished case down on the towel, and admire it from a step back rather than with your nose against it. Eight months on, mine has not had to come apart again.

Step 4: Set It Down or Hang It, Then Leave It Alone

On a mantel or a shelf, that is the whole job. Set it down, square it to the edge, and step back. The case is 3.3 inches deep so it does not overhang much, but it is 3.8 pounds of frame and cloth, and a shelf that flexes under your hand will flex under this too.

On a wall, use the hardware that ships in the box and get one side into a stud if you can. Two people is easier than one, one holding the case against the wall while the other checks the level with a real level and not an app on a phone. I hung a coin display for my brother Ray in March with a stud finder and it took half an hour. The flag case is the lighter, simpler version of the same job.

Wherever it ends up, decide now and stop moving it. Every move is a chance to drop it, and a folded flag that comes apart on a hardwood floor is a bad afternoon for everybody in the room. That is the case for a mantel. It is out of the traffic pattern and it needs no hook in the plaster.

Step 5: Keep the Front Clean and the Flag Dry

Dust the plexiglass with a soft dry cloth, or one barely damp with water, and go easy. Plexiglass scratches. A paper towel, a rough rag, or a shirt sleeve will leave a haze you cannot polish out, and once it is there you will notice it every time you walk past that shelf. I keep a clean cloth in a drawer near the mantel for exactly this.

Keep the case out of a bathroom, off a wall above a radiator or a wood stove, and away from the window that gets sun all afternoon. The flag inside is cloth that has already been through a funeral. It does not need heat or steam on top of that.

Once a year, take a look. Check that the case is sitting flat, that the hanging hardware is still tight, and that nothing has gotten inside it. That is the whole maintenance list. Eight months in, my father's flag is exactly where I set it in March and I have not had to touch it.

Ten minutes at the kitchen table, and a flag that had been in a dresser drawer since 2009 was on the mantel where I see it every morning.

What Else Helps

If there are medals, a rank patch, or a photograph that belongs with the flag, a shadow box will take all of it and a triangle case will not. The tradeoff is size and wall space, and the amount of planning it takes to lay out a shadow box so it does not look like a junk drawer with glass on it. Decide which one you actually have before you order.

A plastic sleeve is not a display. My father's flag sat in one in a drawer for sixteen years, and Marge's sat on her kitchen table in one for four days before we did something about it. If you are not ready to display a flag, store it flat and dry and leave it alone until you are. Just do not mistake the sleeve for a decision.

The last thing that helped was asking. Marge did not want Walt's flag over the television, which is where I would have put it. She wanted it on the bookcase where she sits in the afternoon. Once we knew that, the rest of it took ten minutes, and the Americanflat case has been on that bookcase since March without a wobble.

Who This Is For

This is for the person who was handed a flag at a funeral and has not decided what to do with it. The widow, the daughter, the son, the grandson, the friend from the post. It is also for a veteran's adult child who has had a parent's flag in a closet for years and keeps meaning to get to it. If that is you, the getting to it takes ten minutes.

It is not for a flag that is still in use, and it is not for a casket flag that has been stored badly and needs a conservator rather than a frame. It is also not a gift you buy for someone without asking. I asked Marge about the bookcase first. If you are buying this for someone else, ask where they want it before you order, because the answer is not always where you would have guessed.