Since Flag Day (June 14) fell on a Sunday the year I submitted “Why the American Flag was Precious to Grandma,” it was published by The Des Moines Sunday Register on the front page of the Opinion section, overarched by an American flag, in color.  June 14, 2020

It is included in Chapter 11: Holidays in The Immigrant and the Outlaw. Here’s how it begins:

“Since 1916 we Americans have officially celebrated the Stars and Stripes each June 14.

     “The American flag was precious to my grandmother. One of my favorite pictures of her is under a flag at my parents’ farm near Dexter.

      “Back in 1890 when Leora Goff was born in Guthrie County, Iowa, the new states of Idaho and Wyoming had just been added to the Union, making 44 stars in the flag. Utah became a State when she was 5, the same year her father went bankrupt in Nebraska’s drought, adding the 45th star.

      “Leora was nearly 17, living in rural Audubon County, riding a horse into Audubon to take piano lessons, and helping her dad with his popcorn crop, when Oklahoma was admitted to the Union–46 stars.

      “The 48-star flag came about when New Mexico and Arizona became states right before the Titanic sank in 1912. Leora was 21 then, living at Wichita, Iowa, not yet married.

      “It was that familiar 48-star flag for the next 33 years–through Leora’s marriage to Clabe Wilson, the Great War, the births of their 10 children, the loss of three as infants, and through WW II, when they lost three sons.

      “Flag Day was so important to Leora Wilson. She’d display the American flag outside her little house in Guthrie Center, where she lived out her last decades. . . . “

Montie Montgomery produced it for Our American Stories. Here it is.  It runs 12 minutes.

The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland is available in paperback, hardbound, ebook, and audiobook through Amazon.com and Amazon.uk.