LANCASTER, Ohio, June 25 (DC Times Online) — For travelers who visit U.S. state capitols, the 50-star flag can seem like a fixed part of the scenery. Bob Heft’s story shows how that flag got there: He said he made it as a high school history project in Lancaster, Ohio, before it became the nation’s official banner.
A school project in Ohio
In a StoryCorps oral-history interview, Heft said he was 17 when his teacher, Stanley Pratt, assigned a history project. Heft said he responded by sewing a 50-star flag, even though Alaska and Hawaii had not yet both become states.
Heft recalled that 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.”
Heft said he later sent the flag to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959 and asked him to adopt the design for the country’s new flag when Hawaii became the 50th state.
Why the timing mattered
The flag’s history sits inside the statehood timeline. Alaska had already become a state in January 1959, creating a 49-star flag. Hawaii’s statehood in August 1959 meant the country would need a 50-star version.
In Heft’s account, that is where his classroom project fit in. StoryCorps says he later received a call from Eisenhower inviting him to Washington, D.C., for a ceremony adopting the design, and that Pratt later changed the grade to an A.
In later correspondence cited by Fox News, 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.
How the flag traveled beyond Washington
Fox News reported that Heft’s handmade flag was flown over at least 40 state capitol buildings from 1960 to 1962, including capitols in New York, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Utah, Nebraska and Alaska.
One of the clearest examples in the reporting came from Texas. Fox News said the flag flew for five hours over the Texas state capitol in Austin on Oct. 5, 1960. Gov. Price Daniel was quoted as saying it would have stayed up all day except for “a rain and high wind which started about 12 p.m.”
Ohio also played a role. Fox News reported that Gov. Michael DiSalle wrote Heft that he was “pleased to verify your story that yours was the first 50-star flag displayed in Ohio on Ohio property.”
What travelers should take from the story
The practical takeaway is simple: the 50-star flag is not just a symbol tied to Washington. Its history runs through state capitols, the White House and other public buildings across the country.
That makes the story useful for anyone planning visits to capitol buildings in Ohio, Texas or elsewhere. Even when the flag itself is not the attraction, the places where it was flown became part of the national record Heft said he helped shape.
The reporting available on Heft’s story relies heavily on his own recollections and the letters and public statements quoted over the years. But the basic outline is consistent: a Lancaster teenager said he turned a history assignment into the flag that became the one flown by the United States.
