Flags have long represented freedom, strength

SALT LAKE CITY — Today is the 60th anniversary of America's Flag Day, though the roots for the observance stretch back to 1885.

This year's Flag Day is of special note, since it also marks the 50th year that the new, 50-star flag has been waving in the wind, thanks to Hawaii becoming a state in 1959. The first Flag Day with 50 stars was in 1960.

"The new 50-star flag, more than any of the others, is a visible assertion of our freedom and our strength," a Deseret News editorial stated on Aug. 22, 1959.

Alaska became the 49th state in January 1959, just eight months prior to Hawaii's admittance.

Reports in the Deseret News from 1959 state that ZCMI had sold out all of its 48-star flags as collector items, and that manufacturers could not keep up with the high demand for the 49-star version.

"In the history of flag-making there has probably never been such a 'heyday' of activity," Calvin Lambert, stationary manager for ZCMI, said in a 1959 article in the Deseret News.

Photo researcher Ron Fox has assembled many photos of Flag Day, from past issues of the newspaper, which can be seen in full online at deseretnews.com.

"Red, white and blue was the color scheme of the day as Utah and the nation observed Flag Day," the Deseret News reported on June 14, 1955. However, a photograph accompanying the story shows the flag raised that day at the Salt Lake City Library was mistakenly raised upside down.

So popular was flag flying in 1955 that an advertisement from Salt Lake Costume Company listed 19 special days each year to fly a flag and dozens of additional ones, too, to commemorate admission of each state into the union.

Flag fever had not cooled by the late '60s. The U.S. flag was planted on the moon in 1969. Also, locally, "The Flag: Symbol of Hope," was a long discourse in the Deseret News by Rep. Laurence J. Burton, R-Utah.

A Church News editorial on June 14, 1969, stressed, "The flag of the United States is a sacred banner," to counter some recent flag-burning events.

Besides some prominent flag desecration events, the 1960s was also a decade of controversy over what is and is not appropriate protocol with flag flying.