While June 14, 1777, marks the official birth of the Stars and Stripes, the story of the modern 50-star flag we salute today belongs to a clever 17-year-old high school student from Lancaster, Ohio, named Robert G. Heft. Anticipating that Alaska and Hawaii would soon be admitted as the 49th and 50th states, Heft spent 12 hours at his family’s kitchen table using his mother’s sewing machine to rearrange the stars into a crisp, staggered pattern.
A fascinating detail of this piece of Americana is that when Heft turned the handmade flag into his history teacher for a class project, he was handed a disappointing B-minus grade. His teacher told him the design lacked creativity and arrogantly joked, “If you can get the United States Congress to adopt the flag, I’ll change your grade to an A.” Taking the challenge literally, Heft mailed his project to his local congressman. Out of more than 1,500 designs submitted to the White House, President Dwight D. Eisenhower personally selected the teenager’s pattern. On a subsequent Flag Day celebration, Heft’s teacher honorably stayed true to his word, tracking down the student and officially changing his high school history grade to a well-deserved A.
