Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 4, 1993 TAG: 9307040293
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICK SORAN and DAN KLINGLESMITH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Two sites in Baltimore, Maryland - Flag House and Fort McHenry - tell the tale of how bolts of fabric, in those patriotic shades of red, white and blue, were transformed; first by skilled fingers into a flag bigger than a house and then by an inspired poet into a song as big as a nation's dreams.
It happened during the War of 1812. The British blockaded Chesapeake Bay, captured Washington D.C., and sailed toward Fort McHenry.
Shaped like a five-point star, the fort hunkers along a strip of land curving round the city's inner harbor, like an arm shielding eyes from danger. In those hazardous days food and supplies filled the storerooms. Armories were loaded with munitions and cannons pointed across the bay's rippling waves. The fort was prepared - except for one thing.
Let's face it, Americans love to taunt their enemy. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe said, "Nuts!," to the Germans at Bastogne. John Paul Jones sneered, "I have not yet begun to fight." Well, Maj. George Armistead, Fort McHenry's commander, wanted a flag - a flag so large, he wrote, "that the British will have no trouble seeing it from a distance."
He turned to Mary Pickersgill.
The 36-year-old widow from Philadelphia earned her living crafting ships' banners in the two-story, red brick house she rented at Pratt and Ablemarle streets. Today, friendly docents guide 8,000 patriots a year through the federal-style interiors of the National Historic Landmark. They point out Pickersgill's crystal wineglasses, paintings and her grandfather clock. But that's not why people drop in. "Most folks come to visit a piece of the nation's past," says Flag House administrator Mary Helen Nippard, and they sense that most strongly in the upstairs bedroom where Pickersgill stitched her way into history.
Using the only fabric available, narrow bolts of British wool, she seamed red-to-red and white-to-white to make strips. Then she converted strips into stripes, sewing red-to-white and white-to-red. The gleaming cloth for the stars must have been woven locally to the right width for no seam mars their face.
For weeks Pickersgill, her daughter and two nieces spent every waking moment cutting and fitting, snipping and sewing; "as many hours as she could hold her eyes open," says Nippard. As the project neared completion, the women transported it to a nearby brewery to stretch out and sew on the stars. Every stitch on the entire 1,200-square-foot field of cloth was pulled by hand, shiny needles racing against the onslaught of British bayonets.
The original banner - 30 feet by 42 feet - hangs in the Smithsonian. Imagine a standard as tall as a three-story building and long as a semi-trailer. The bands are 2 feet high. Individual stars span 2 feet tip-to-tip. And like the states they represent each is a little different - one has a point askew; another, like a perky cartoon character, appears to shrug.
Pickersgill delivered her masterpiece on Aug. 19, 1813. The receipt reads, "One American Ensign From First Rate Bunting, $405.90."
But that's only half the story.
Every year nearly 600,000 people stroll up the concrete walk to the Fort McHenry Visitors Center. Beyond lie the red stone walls and grassy moats of the only U.S. site designated as both a National Monument and a Historic Shrine. A full-size duplicate of Pickersgill's flag emblazons the sky.
"Any national park is important to every American," says Chief Ranger John Burns. "They're the national symbols. But this one is unique; it signifies the events of September 13 and 14, 1814 -the writing of the "Star-Spangled Banner."
Those events are depicted during a 16-minute film shown every half-hour in the center. Viewers learn the facts behind the song they've sung since childhood.
No adventure movie could contain more drama. Washington, D.C., is burning. Dr. William Beanes is held captive aboard a British ship out on the bay. Francis Scott Key, a Washington lawyer, braves the opposition to win his friend's freedom. The British admiral grants Key's request but, because the young man has seen the plans for the Battle of Baltimore, he must stay aboard an enemy ship as the English fleet attacks Fort McHenry.
The bombing begins at 7 a.m. on the 13th and continues all day and through the night. The British certainly don't have any trouble seeing the flag at a distance; they aim volley after volley of exploding bombs at the upstart nation's symbol. Blazing red rockets light up the night sky.
When the sun's morning rays penetrate the smoke and fog, Key realizes that the flag still flies, the fort has not surrendered. He takes out a pencil, borrows paper and begins to jot down now familiar phrases. An anthem emerges.
As the movie concludes, the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club appears on the screen. "Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light." The audience begins to stir, standing - "what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming," - drapery covering a glass wall draws back exposing the fort to view - " whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight," - the audience turns from the screen to look out the window - "o'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming" - outside, above those very ramparts, waves the Star-Spangled Banner.
Patrick Soran and Dan Klinglesmith are free-lance travel writers and photographers based in Denver
by CNB