ALASKA TALES---BOBBY BENSON & THE ALASKA STATE FLAG

The Alaska Flag

In 1926 Alaska was nearing its 60th year under the U.S. flag when Alaska Gov. George A. Parks on a trip to a Post Office in Washington saw that the Territory of Alaska had no flag.  He decided it was time the territory had its own official flag. Governor Parks thought that the Alaska Chapter of the American Legion would be a good place to go for advice on a flag.  The Legion leaders came up with a great idea; have a flag design contest among Alaska's schoolchildren in grades 7 through 12.

More than 700 flags were designed by school kids before the best 142 selected by schools and communities all over the huge, sparsely populated territory were sent to Juneau for the final judging. Many of those original flag designs are part of the American Legion Collection now held by the Alaska State Museum in Juneau. If your ship makes a Juneau port call the State Museum is a worthwhile stop.

The eventual winning design was drawn by a 13 year old boy who was a student at what was called a Territorial School at Seward, near the tip of the Kenai Peninsula.  I guess you could call the winner, a kid named Benny Benson, a true Alaskan because he was the son of a father from Sweden and a mother with Aleut and Russian ancestry.  They were also dirt poor which was no surprise in those days. 

Alaskan Family at around Benny's Time

Benny had a hard life right from the beginning.  His mother died when he was three and his father could not cope with bringing up Benny and his siblings on his own.  The family home at Chignik, also on the Kenai, was broken up and Benny and his brother Carl were sent out to the Aleutian Island of Unalaska to an orphanage. Don’t forget;  Benny was three years old and his first Alaskan cruise was a bit less deluxe than what we experience today.  It was on an old steam/sail schooner that took about a week for the 800 mile trip.  That would be maybe two days on a modern ship.

The Unalaska orphanage closed and Benny and got shipped back to the Kenai to the Seward Territorial School, another orphanage.  He was now 5. 

Benny Benson submitted several designs for the contest, including one with Mount McKinley as the central feature; another included a dog team and the year 1867, when the U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia. For his winning design, however, Benson used blue paint and construction paper, placing the Big Dipper and North Star (the Ursa Major constellation) against a blue background. He cut the colored flag out and glued it to his entry.  On the same page he wrote what the flag meant to him.   His handwritten notes on the art say: "The blue field is for the Alaska sky and the foret-me-not [sic], an Alaskan flower. The North Star is for the future state of Alaska, the most northerly in the union. The Dipper is for the Great Bear, symbolising strenth [sic]."

Benny's Entry with later picture

How is that for what today we would call the work of a throwaway kid?

More on Benny and the Alaskan Flag in the next posting.

Benny and his Hand Made Flag