Light the candles on the cake and toot the kazoos!
Bet you didn’t know that Thursday, June 5, 2025 is an important birthday in Kewanee.
It was 75 years ago on this date that the city council adopted an ordinance approving the design of the city’s one and only official flag.
Accompanied by a drawing of the flag’s design, Ordinance No. 1274 reads “Be it ordained by the council of the City of Kewanee, Ill., that the foregoing flag or insignia be and the same is hereby adopted as the official flag or insignia of the City of Kewanee. Adopted by the council this 5th day of June, A. D., 1950. The ordinance was “approved and signed” by Mayor Fred J. Brown and attested by City Clerk Harry Orr. Commissioner Edwin F. Peterson moved to adopt the ordinance and Commissioner Francis Dean seconded the motion before unanimous council approval.
Today most Kewaneeans are probably unaware that the city has an official flag. Where is it? There are only a few left and fewer places today where they are displayed.
Over the years the official city flag was almost forgotten. That was until the early 1990’s when Kewanee VFW member Andy Koehler. Who died last year, noticed there was no flag representing the city in the lineup, along with the American, Illinois, VFW and other banners displayed on a new flag rack.
He found a 1950 city ordinance with the drawing of the flag attached and started investigating. He found two full-sized flags, one in the city council chambers, the other at American Legion Post 31.
Bob Richards at the Kewanee Historical Society also had several desk-sized flags at their museum. He also learned that Richards had been contacted two years earlier by a Baptist minister from Cambridge named Tom Thompson.
Rev. Thompson said his father, Richard Thompson, who lived in Rockford, had won a contest in 1949 when his family lived in Kewanee, to design a city flag. The elder Thompson later came to Kewanee and was given one of their smaller flags by the Kewanee Historical Society.
Koehler’s research also revealed that adoption of the flag was not as simple as it would seem.
In the fall of 1949, the Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees) sponsored a contest to come up with a design for an official city flag to be presented to the city council for approval.
Thompson, a senior at KHS and student of art teacher Dorothy Smith, one of 21 entries, was presented with a box of paints for a prize.
The design featured three interlocking red circles on a blue background, one for industry, which contained a factory, one for fraternity, which included a bold, white cross behind clasped hands, and a third for agriculture, which contained a plow and stalk of corn.
When a completed flag with Thompson’s design was presented to the council in May of 1950, the council balked. The issue was the cross. When he returned to Kewanee in 1993 to accept a flag Thompson recalled “They didn’t think, at the time, that the cross represented everyone in Kewanee such as those of the Jewish faith.” It may also have been thought that the handshake between industry and agriculture more appropriately represented Kewanee, and fraternity, without the religious symbol.
The final version of the flag was presented to the city at the Fourth of July fireworks in the KHS stadium on July 4, 1950.
Shortly after high school Thompson’s family moved to Rock Falls and then to Rockford where he worked for many years in the city zoning office and continued to draw as a hobby. He said he only saw the completed flag once after leaving Kewanee, that was in a parade in Rock Falls in the early 50’s when it was carried by the Black Knights Drum and Bugle Corps. He said he didn’t know who altered the flag to reflect the wishes of the council.
Continuing his one-man mission to make sure Kewaneeans knew they had an official city flag, Koehler had 12 full-sized, nylon flags made by a company in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He gave them to the VFW and Legion posts, city hall, the Chamber of Commerce and the Historical Society where it is displayed over the front door inside of the museum.
It is not known what happened to the remaining full-sized flags. Chamber Executive Vice President Mark Mikenas, who has been spreading the word about the 75th anniversary of the adoption of our official city flag, said he contacted the Iowa company, which is still in business, about having 12 new flags made which could possibly be used as a fundraiser, but the cost was too high.
Mikenas also has a color print on cardboard of the original design with directions and arrows in pencil showing the removal of the cross. He remembers finding the drawing in a box with other things, possibly at the estate sale of the late Joe Rule, who operated a print shop here for many years.
Thompson said he has nothing to do with altering the design.
Mikenas said the Chamber’s city flag has only been on display twice along with other flags at the Fourth of July fireworks in Northeast Park.
You can see the flag any day of the week at the Wanee Theater. Mikenas said that shortly before he died two years ago, theater owner Bud Johnson asked him for a city flag. Mikenas wasn’t about to give up the Chamber’s only flag but suggested that Johnson see if B&B Printing could produce a replica. They did and it is now on display, bordered by Walldogs murals, in the south outside window of the theater.
It is also worth noting that the theater opened its doors on June 5, 1946, the same month and day the city council adopted an official city flag four years later.
