On June 27, the House of Representatives made history by approving a bill to grant statehood to Washington, D.C. Though the Democrat-backed measure is dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate, there was unintended irony in the timing of its passage in the House. It came six days shy of the current U.S. flag’s 60th birthday.
This is the longest stretch in American history that Old Glory has gone unchanged. As every schoolchild knows, the original flag had 13 stars and 13 stripes honoring the original 13 colonies-turned-states. Two more stars and stripes were added when New Hampshire and Kentucky joined the Union. In fact, it was a 15-star flag that Francis Scott Key saw flying over Fort McHenry in 1814, inspiring him to write the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
It didn’t take long for federal officials to realize the new state, new star and stripe practice was seriously flawed. The star part worked just fine — it was the stripe portion that was causing headaches. Imagine a banner that would have, say, 25 rows of alternating red and white stripes. It would have looked absurd.
So, in 1818, we switched to the practice that’s been followed ever since: Each new state gets its own star, while the stripes permanently reverted to 13 in tribute to the country’s founding.
By 1912, the field had grown to a constellation of 48 stars, the flag American troops carried around the globe in World War II. But in 1959, its 47-year run was drawing to a close.
Alaska joined the Union on Jan. 3 that year. A few 49-star flags were produced. (I had one once, until an unpleasant divorce resulted in it getting a new home.) Hawaii followed on Aug. 21, making it possible for Ray Charles to pen the song three generations of schoolchildren have warbled ever since: “Fifty Nifty United States.”
Although the new state count now had a song, it didn’t have a flag. President Dwight Eisenhower turned to the public for help. He invited Americans to submit designs for a new 50-star flag. The White House was soon flooded with hundreds of drawings.
Which is where Bob Heft enters our story.
He was a 17-year-old high school student in little Lancaster, Ohio. A teacher assigned his students to come up with a 50-star design.
Heft enthusiastically jumped into the project. He arranged the stars in alternating rows of five and six. Nearly 13 hours later, the first 50-star flag was finished. Heft proudly showed it to his teacher.
And the teacher hated it! It lacked originality, he said. Heft received a B- for his effort.
Crestfallen at the rejection, the teacher offered Heft a consolation prize: If the boy could get his flag approved by Congress, the grade would be raised. Think about that for a minute: Robert Heft was a child living in a town of 30,000 people, just one of 180 million Americans at the time. He had a better chance of being struck by lightning while winning the lottery than pulling it off.
With the confidence unique to adolescents too young to realize the insurmountable odds against them, Heft accepted the challenge. He sent his design to his congressman, Walter Moeller, who liked it so much, he made sure Heft’s prototype was forwarded straight to the White House. And sure enough, lightning struck. Heft’s design was selected from more than 1,500 submissions.
On Monday, July 4, 1960, exactly 60 years ago, Heft’s design officially became the U.S. flag. His grade was officially changed to an A, too.
Heft went on to become a college professor and served as the mayor of Napoleon, Ohio, for 20 years before retiring to his native Michigan.
If Washington does attain statehood one day, a new 51-star flag will be required. But don’t worry. Young Robert Heft made a design for that, too. So even though he passed away in December 2009, he’s still got us covered.
J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He’s vice president of communications at Ivory Tusk Consulting, a South Carolina-based agency. A former broadcast journalist and government communicator, his “Holy Cow! History” column is available at jmarkpowell.com.
