You have not taken the trouble to ascertain the facts surrounding the flag-restoration program (“New York’s Fading Glory,” Jan. 25).

While most of the funds for restoration are from private sources and volunteer restoration experts, the use of any taxpayer money for this purpose is just one more example of profligate spending by Albany.

Banners are meant to fade, as the French and the British know so well. Once the banners are restored in New York, they will not be displayed, and the public will never have a chance to see them, for they remain that fragile.

A better program would be to have the banners reproduced in modern fabrics and then openly displayed so that all New Yorkers could have the chance to cherish and reflect upon the symbol our soldiers fought and died under in order to preserve our union and its freedoms.

Kenyon B. Fitzgerald, Jr.,

Official Historian, Seventh Regiment of NY, Manhattan