U.S. Marine Corps veteran Jason Mangone will be the keynote speaker at the annual Spirit of Princeton Flag Day ceremony on June 13.
The ceremony starts at noon at the Princeton Municipal Complex plaza at 400 Witherspoon St., and will be held rain or shine.
Mangone began his career as an infantry officer in the U.S. Marines Corps. He served from 2006 to 2010.
He is a volunteer firefighter with the Princeton Fire Department and also serves on the Princeton Little League board of directors.
Mangone earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Boston College and a master’s degree in international relations from Yale University.
He is the executive director of More in Common, which is a nonprofit group. It publishes research, builds strategies and works in partnership with leaders and organizations in the United States. Its goal is to help those partners to bring Americans together across differences to engage meaningfully in civil and cultural life, according to www.moreincommonus.com.
The Spirit of Princeton’s Flag Day ceremony is being held one day before the official Flag Day, which is June 14. It was decided to hold it a day earlier to accommodate students who may want to participate in the ceremony.
The Princeton Police Department, the Princeton Fire Department, the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad and students from the Community Park School will take part in the ceremony.
Flag Day commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States, which was approved by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1777 through resolution.
Flag Day was first proposed in 1861 to show support for the Union side of the American Civil War, shortly after the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
The first official observance of Flag Day took place at a school in Wisconsin in 1885.
President Woodrow Wilson established June 14 as Flag Day in 1916, but it took an act of Congress in 1949 to establish national Flag Day on June 14.
The Spirit of Princeton, which sponsors the Flag Day ceremony, is a nonprofit and nonpartisan community group that also sponsors celebrations of Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
