the icons on my phone,for example a text message or voicemail or e-mail, stay on the top of the screen and will not go away even after the message has been deleted. The only way to reset it is to remove the battery but this should not happen and verizon already replaced the phone and this is the 2nd phone it is doing it.
Have you installed any third party applications? Mine generally clears those symbols when I've deleted the email (I don't do text) or retrieved voice mail. So unless you have something oddball installed (which OS?) I don't understand why your phone would not clear them.