Good design keeps Tennessee state flag popular

Chief curator Dan Pomeroy of the Tennessee State Museum, looks at the first Tennessee state flag that flew over the state in Johnson City, May 22, 1905, on exhibit at the Museum in Nashville, Friday, April 8, 2005. (AP Photo/John Russell)

The state’s most recognizable symbol, which will celebrate its centennial with a party at the Tennessee State Museum on April 17, is a common sight across the state, and has inspired logos of First Tennessee Bank and the Tennessee Titans.

“If you drive across Tennessee, you see lots of homes flying the flag — maybe because it looks better than other state flags,” said Devereaux Cannon, vice president of the North American Vexillological Association and a Sumner County resident.

The design was adopted officially with a bill approved by the General Assembly on April 17, 1905, after two other designs failed to find their way into general use in the 1800s.

Johnson City attorney and Tennessee National Guard Capt. LeRoy Reeves developed the flag as it appears today probably because the other two designs did not look very effective on a flagpole, said Candace Adelson, senior curator of textiles and fashion at the Tennessee State Museum.

Reeves described his design, saying it would include three stars to represent the three grand divisions of the state.

“They are bound together by the endless circle of the blue field, the symbol being three bound together in one — and indissoluble trinity,” he said in his early 20th century description.

The blue stripe at the fly end of the flag “relieves the sameness of the crimson field and prevents the flag from showing too much crimson when hanging limp.”

A survey conducted by the vexillological association rated the Tennessee flag in the top 10 of state flags.

Peter Orenski, a flagmaker in Connecticut, said the Tennessee flag is “a flagmaker’s dream” with basic colors and a simple design.

“A flag has to be simple without being simplistic,” he said. “Here is a flag, in terms of a flagmaker, that is simple without being simplistic. It says Tennessee to anyone who knows anything about it.”

Ted Kaye, an officer in the vexillological association and author of the booklet “Good Flag, Bad Flag,” said the Tennessee banner stands out from half of the other U.S. state flags that have come to be known as “s.o.b. flags.”

“They’re what we call a ‘seal on a bedsheet,'” he said. “They’re just a state seal plopped on a blue field.”

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Tennessee State Museum: http://www.tnmuseum.org/