OLD GLORY IN A COUNTRY UNIITED --- My paternal grandmother Elizabeth Long was San Diego's Flag Girl in 1921 for a Daughters of the Revolution event. San Diego had recently decided to preserve Balboa Park after the 1915 Panama Exhibition. In January 1921, a San Diego Union Tribune editorial started the ball rolling by arguing: "Aside from all artistic or merely sentimental considerations, San Diego cannot afford to let this beautiful picture fade. Balboa Park is not a luxury to be maintained merely for the pleasure of San Diego; it is a necessary of our civic life and a profitable adjunct of our future metropolitan development. To keep this wonderful possession and to make the most of its limitless resources of beauty and pleasure is the main object of those who have organized the Mid-Winter exposition movement. Its purpose should appeal to every San Diegan, every public-spirited citizen and every lover of the beautiful in art and nature." Everyone was also in a very patriotic mood in 1921 what with WWI recently ending, the first American President being inaugurated that women had voted into office, and the first Miss America was crowned. Sure, prohibition was also in full swing, but according to my grandmother, that didn't get anybody's spirits down as everyone knew a bootlegger or two. (Photo: San Diego Flag Girl Elizabeth Long Stalmer, 1921)
June 29, 2015