With 13 vibrant yellow and red rays bursting out of a copper star atop a deep navy blue, the Arizona state flag is celebrating its 100th birthday along with the state. What most people don’t know is the original flag, which is on display at the Arizona State Museum in Phoenix, was sewn together by an NAU alumna.
Sean Evans, an archivist at NAU’s Cline Library, spoke to NAZ Today about the origins of Arizona’s historic state flag.
“As it turns out, it looks like the person who made the flag was May Hicks,” Evans said.
He explained Hicks was engaged to a member of the Arizona National Guard, Frank Curtis. The Guard was preparing to attend a shooting competition in Ohio when they realized they were the only state without a flag. Therefore, Curtis requested his fiancee, Hicks, to make a flag.
“So, they did some rough sketching — I guess Frank Curtis is supposedly the one who did the sketches of the flag and sent it back to Flagstaff,” Evans said. “May Hicks was a graduate of Northern Arizona Normal School, NANS, one of NAU’s predecessor institutions, and so in 1911 she stitched this thing together and sent it off to them and it wound up at the competition.”
In 1912, the legislature chose to adopt the design as the state flag — which is the same design used today.
“. . .The blue bottom half is the same blue as the United States flag. The 13 rays of yellow and red reflecting the western sunset represent the 13 original colonies. The copper-colored star is for the copper industry,” Evans said.
Despite historical references, which include pictures of Hicks wrapped in the flag and holding it, he said the museum that the original flag is displayed in does not lend credit to Hicks.
“The flag, as near as I know, is actually located at the State Museum down at the Capital, but they just don’t talk much about May Hicks being the person who actually created the flag,” Evans said. “Kind of her own Betsy Ross story, so to speak.”
According the Evans, Hicks, who eventually married Curtis, graduated from NANS in 1905, most likely with a degree in education.
“Being at the Normal School, I’d have to think she was a teacher because that would be about all you could get here at this school way, way back,” He said.
Although Flagstaff is a smaller city in Arizona, Evans said the region contributed much more to the state’s history than many believe.
“It’s sort of funny when you look at the history of Northern Arizona University and our institutions on campus, how little things like this sort of jump out and surprise you,” Evans said. “You tend to think of Arizona as being very Phoenix-centric or maybe Tucson-centric and yet, here’s little old NAU and we’ve just got these little stories . . . So we may be far removed from the Capital and the seat of power and the politics and stuff, but our citizens contributed a lot over the years.”
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