Georgetown-Millsboro Rotary flies flags for Delaware Day

The Georgetown-Millsboro Rotary Club received a Rotary District grant to purchase nearly 100 Delaware flags to fly at locations in Georgetown and Millsboro to commemorate Delaware Day, Dec. 7, when Delaware became the First State to ratify the U.S. Constitution on that date in 1787, establishing a new nation.

Flags will be flying through Tuesday, Dec. 13, in Georgetown at The Circle and the Delaware Tech Owens Campus, and at the Millsboro Town Center, the Millsboro Post Office and at the point of Washington and Main streets by the Indian River in Millsboro.

The Georgetown-Millsboro Rotary Club was the leading organization in advocating for the recognition. Delaware educator and legislator E. Paul Burkholder, along with the Rotary Club of Georgetown, secured more than 6,000 signatures on petitions, which were presented to the governor and to the Legislature. As a result, a House Joint Resolution was passed and approved on Nov. 29, 1933, and the first Delaware Day celebration was held Dec. 7 of that year, by proclamation of Gov. C. Douglass Buck.

Since then, the governors of Delaware have proclaimed Dec. 7 as Delaware Day each year.

The Georgetown-Millsboro Rotary Club members hope that with a more public recognition of Delaware Day, more Delawareans, both longtime residents and newcomers alike, will have a better appreciation of the role Delaware's swift ratification of the Constitution played not only in the state's history, but in that of the nation as well.