LANCASTER, Ohio, June 25 (DC Times Online) — Bob Heft’s story starts in Lancaster, Ohio, with a school assignment and ends with the 50-star flag that became the nation’s official banner.
Heft said he was 17 and a high school junior when he made the design as a history-class project in 1958. In a StoryCorps oral history, he recalled that his teacher, Stanley Pratt, gave him a B- and told him: “If you don’t like the grade, get it accepted in Washington then come back and see me.”
Why his flag mattered
At the time, the United States was changing fast. Alaska had just become the 49th state, and Hawaii was about to become the 50th. That made the usual flag design outdated. In retellings published by Ohio Magazine and Guideposts, Heft said he decided to create a new flag with 50 stars because he expected the country would soon need one.
Heft said he sent his flag to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959 and asked him to adopt it for the nation’s new flag. StoryCorps says Heft later recalled getting a call inviting him to Washington, D.C., for the adoption ceremony, and that his teacher later changed the grade to an A.
Ohio Magazine says the 50-star flag became the official U.S. flag on July 4, 1960.
What Heft said happened next
Fox News reports that Heft said he had made and flown the first 50-star flag in the United States and that it was first flown on March 7, 1959. Fox News also says White House chief of staff Wilton B. Persons sent Heft a thank-you letter.
That same reporting says Heft’s handmade flag later traveled widely. Fox News says it was flown over at least 40 state capitol buildings from 1960 to 1962, including in New York, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Utah, Nebraska and Alaska.
The Texas state capitol in Austin is one of the best-documented stops in the coverage. Fox News says the flag flew there for five hours on Oct. 5, 1960. Gov. Price Daniel said it would have been displayed all day except for rain and high wind that began around noon.
Fox News also quotes Ohio Gov. Michael DiSalle as writing to Heft that he was “pleased to verify your story that yours was the first 50-star flag displayed in Ohio on Ohio property.”
How to read the story today
For travelers and history-minded visitors, the Heft story is really a route map of American symbols. It connects Lancaster, Washington, D.C., Austin and a long list of state capitols from coast to coast.
The important caution is that some of the details come from Heft’s own account and later retellings. The exact number of capitol displays and embassy displays varies by source, and the snippets reviewed here do not include full archival records for every stop. What is clear is that Heft said he designed the 50-star flag before it was officially adopted, and that his flag was later displayed in public places across the country.
Heft summed up his view of the flag in one of the quoted accounts: “It’s not just a piece of cloth, it’s the fabric of America.”
