American Flag From Iraq Flies Over School

COLD SPRING — An American Flag brought back from Iraq by Lower Township Police Patrolman Don Vanaman was flown above the Sandman Consolidated School Thursday Nov. 20.
The Sandman Student Council and Sandman Singers gathered in front of the flagpole at 9 a.m. along with Lower Township police officers.
On Sept. 14, Lower Township Mayor Walter Craig and Police Chief Edward Donohue welcomed back Vanaman from a year of military service in Iraq in a ceremony in Township Hall.
Vanaman presented Craig with a flag flown in Iraq to be flown over the township’s elementary schools and then be retired to Township Hall. The flag flew over the Al Faw palace, once one of Saddam Hussein’s 99 palaces in Baghdad, where Gen. Petraeus recently resided.
Vanaman and Lower Township Police Patrolman William Barcas, who served in the Air National Guard, raised the flag.
From 1996 to 2001, Vanaman was in the U.S. Army 348th Military Police Detachment Criminal Investigations Division deployed to South Korea and the Bosnia-Kosovo conflict.
In July 2007, Vanaman was deployed to Northern Iraq to work in intelligence. He received a Bronze Star for exceptionally meritorious achievement in a combat zone with risk of hostile action.
Vanaman attended Sandman School. He said his fifth and sixth grade teacher, Margaret Swanson, continues to teach at the school.
Vanaman’s son, Marshal is a fifth grade student at Sandman School.
Lower Township Manager Joe Jackson told students the police protected residents around the clock while uncles, cousins, brothers, father and mothers of students served in the military protecting the nation. He said some township residents traded one uniform for another to serve in the reserves on weekends and on active duty overseas.
Donohue advised the students they should watch world news nightly on television so they understood why the military was fighting in different nations.
Lower Township Elementary Schools Superintendent Joseph Cirrincione stood in front of a monument next to the flag pole that honors township residents that lost their lives in World War II. He thanked those who gave their lives for America, Vanaman for his service to his country and Lower Township police for serving “24/7.”
The flag will fly over each of the district’s four elementary schools for one week moving next to the Maud Abrams School and eventually to the Lower Cape May Regional School District, said Cirrincione.
The Sandman Singers with David Dunlap on guitar closed the ceremony singing “American the Beautiful.”
Vanaman, 35, said he knew early in life he wanted to be a police officer and serve in the military.
“My grandfather was a Korean War vet and in the Marine Corps and he had a huge influence in raising me,” said Vanaman.
At the time he wanted to begin his police career, the department was not hiring, so he went into the military. After serving five years, he said he did not want to cut ties with the military, so he remained in the reserves.
Vanaman said his operations chief in the military and Donohue went to the Marine Police Academy together and graduated from the same class.