BANNER YEARS

Jun. 27, 2019

1865:  An Annin flag draped Abraham Lincoln’s coffin—and every presidential coffin since.

Photo: Library of Congress

1901: A spray of Annin flags decorated Teddy Roosevelt’s inauguration. The company has produced flags for every presidential inauguration since Zachary Taylor’s in 1849.

Photo: Library of Congress

1909: American explorers Robert Peary and Matthew Henson, along with Peary’s Inuit assistants, displayed Annin flags during an early expedition to the North Pole.

Photo: Library of Congress

1945:  Annin supplied the first flag raised on Iwo Jima during World War II. (The second, larger flag, depicted in the Marine Corps War Memorial, was not made by Annin.)

Photo: Library of Congress

1959: When Alaska became the 49th state, the star field had to be amended. Annin’s president Digby Chandler designed an elegant 49-star pattern, as well as a 50-star pattern to be used after Hawaii joined the Union later that year. The 49-star flag, produced for only three months, is now a collector’s item.

Photo: Annin Flagmakers

1963: Jim Whittaker, the first American to scale Mt. Everest, planted an Annin flag on the peak.

Barry Bishop at Mount Everest’s summit holds flags.

1969: The first flag on the moon was one small step for a man, one giant leap for Annin. There’s no wind on the moon, so a bar along the top edge props up the flag.

Photo: NASA

1971:  In the midst of Vietnam War protests, Newton Heisley, an ad man for Annin, designed the POW/MIA flag for the National League of Families, uniting America in the call to bring captured and missing troops home.

2001: The iconic photo of firefighters raising an Annin flag from the wreckage, published in the Bergen Record the day after the September 11 terrorist attacks, brought hope to a shattered nation. Annin employees worked overnight for months to meet the unprecedented demand for flags, 20 times greater than usual.

More on Annin Flagmakers:

Raising the Standard:Flags are the family business for Sandy Dennis Van Lieu

6 Things We Didn’t Know About Flags

This story originally ran in the spring 2016 issue of Hue Magazine.