In the predawn hours of July 4, a small, blue house just outside Binghamton, New York, caught fire. James Sitek, chief of the West Colesville Fire Company, was one of the firefighters who responded to the blaze. Shortly after emerging from the building, he went into cardiac arrest. He was pronounced dead at the hospital later that day.

The following week, more than 200 people attended Sitek’s funeral. New York Governor Kathy Hochul had ordered American flags on government buildings across the state to be lowered to half-staff in his honor. In Binghamton, the lowered flag was a potent sign of a community in mourning. Elsewhere in the state, though—100 miles to the west or the north or the east—it would likely have elicited only a shrug.

Lowering the flag was once a relatively rare symbol of public mourning and respect. But Sitek’s flag lowering was the 21st in the state during the first seven months of this year—beginning with a month-long commemoration of President Jimmy Carter that started just before the new year and continuing with respects paid to, among others, four former members of Congress, two New York State Police officers, and a highway-maintenance supervisor for the state Department of Transportation.

Read: The space between mourning and grief

In the past 15 years, flags in New York have been lowered more than 250 times for a total o