Mid-Week Mini: The U.S. Flag Was Designed by a 17-Year-Old
In this week’s Mid-Week Mini Episode, we talk how The United States Flag was designed by a 17-year-old.
In the 1950s, the United States had 48 states. And if you picture that version of the flag, it had 6 rows of 8 stars each, all neatly lined up. People had gotten used to seeing that arrangement since 1912, when Arizona and New Mexico became states. But everyone knew that wouldn’t last much longer. Both Alaska and Hawaii were pushing for statehood, which meant the flag was about to get redesigned.
And while you’d think such an important national symbol would be drawn up by some government committee or a fancy designer in D.C., the version we use today actually started as a school project.
In 1958, a 17-year-old high school junior in Lancaster, Ohio named Robert G. Heft was given an assignment in his history class: create a project related to American history. Robert took out a pair of scissors, a sewing machine, and decided he’d redesign the American flag to include 50 stars. He cut up an old 48-star flag from his grandparents and rearranged the stars into a grid pattern — nine rows alternating between 6 and 5 stars each. He turned it in to his teacher… and got a B-minus.
His teacher thought the design wasn’t very original. But Robert wasn’t content to leave it at that. He petitioned his congressman, who eventually submitted Heft’s design to President Eisenhower. And when Alaska and Hawaii officially became states in 1959, Eisenhower chose Heft’s design out of over 1,500 submissions. Suddenly, the “B-minus project” was the official flag of the United States.
Robert Heft later joked that his teacher promised to change his grade if the design was ever adopted. And sure enough, he got bumped up to an A. The same flag he stitched together in his parents’ living room is still the one flying over the White House today.
So the next time you see the American flag waving in the wind, remember — it was designed by a 17-year-old kid from Ohio for extra credit. The internet says it’s true.
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