Berkley Flag, Emblem Embody City's Spirit, History

On Memorial Day, as Berkley residents remembered those who served in our country’s military in conflicts near and far, the city's hometown flag celebrated a milestone of its own.

Quietly and without fanfare, Berkley’s flag turned 50.

How much do you know about the history of Berkley’s flag and its circular emblem?

“Not a lot of folks have the chance to talk about the flag,” Berkley City Council member Steve Baker said. “There are many interesting things to know about our flag’s history.”

BHS student designed flag

How is a flag even created? Apart from the tale of Betsy Ross designing America's stars and stripes, most people never look behind the cloth to the individual story of a flag’s design and designer.

According to Baker, Berkley’s iconic blue-and-white flag was the result of a 1961 contest sponsored jointly by the and the . Though it is unclear how many entries were considered, the winning design was submitted by a Berkley High School senior named Gary Ostendorf.

“The chosen colors were fantastic — and really appropriate for the time,” Baker said.

Satellite blue, which honored the space age and the many technological advancements of the time, alternated with white on a circular pattern that symbolized the planet Earth, according to Baker, who is the former secretary of Berkley’s Historical Committee. 

“The oak leaves around the circle represent Oakland County, and the four icons in the center of the circle — a church, family, liberty bell and an open school book — represent the common aspects of life in the city,” said Baker, 40, who lives in Berkley with his wife, Nicole, 41, and their chocolate Labrador retrievers, Zoe and Corduroy. 

The original flag, which was hand-sewn, was presented to the city on Memorial Day 1961 and was publicly unfurled during a parade that June.

That flag, now faded by time to cream and gold, is on display in the Berkley Historical Museum, along with a framed collage of newspaper articles, photographs, Ostendorf’s autograph and a program from a recognition dinner held June 10, 1961.

According to one newspaper article, the flag was received by Mayor George Kuhn, Marshall Swalley of the VFW flag committee, VFW Commander Walter Laity and Horace Hughes of the American Legion.

’s 1961 yearbook includes Ostendorf’s senior picture and notations of his involvement in Spanish Club, PTSA, Ski Club and other school activities. According to the rootsweb page of Ancestry.com, Ostendorf died Feb. 9, 2005, in La Mesa, CA, at age 61.

Berkley has long history

This year, Berkley celebrates its 79th anniversary as a city. Residents voted to approve the city's charter in 1932, but Carol Ring, historian with the Berkley Historic Commission, has delved further into the city's history.

She moved to Berkley with her family as a teenager in 1946, though she finished high school in Royal Oak because she wasn’t happy to transfer to Berkley High School.

“There were very few homes occupied at the time, and there were blocks and blocks of nothing,” said Ring, 81. She remembered the first winter in her family’s home on Phillips Avenue because, with no surrounding buildings to break the wind, snow drifted to her second-story bedroom window.

She still lives in that house today, though the city has changed drastically since she moved here, she said.

Though Ring doesn’t specifically remember the flag’s welcome into the fabric of Berkley’s timeline, she does know many facts about the city’s unique history, dating back to the early 1700s, and about the many native populations that inhabited Michigan at the time.

Point of pride

In the fall of 2010, Baker was able to show off Berkley’s flag to the Michigan Municipal League, on which he serves as an active committee member. According to Baker, the league held a Parade of Flags in Dearborn as part of its annual conference.

“Each flag was escorted by one representative from its community, and I was humbled to represent Berkley,” Baker said. The ceremony was an opportunity to display the city’s flag, not just during the procession, but for the entire week of the conference, he said.

“Our city flag proudly stood alongside its companions until the close of the event," he said. "After an informative, engaging MML conference with excellent speakers and timely, relevant content, (the Berkley flag and I) began our journey back to the city that cares.”

Today, Berkley residents are familiar with the motto “We Care,” perhaps more so than with the old flag and its blue-and-white emblem, even though the emblem is displayed on a sign at the city’s border on Woodward Avenue north of 12 Mile Road.

Adopted in the 1970s, Berkley’s city motto is “the most fitting of slogans for a community whose roots in caring for one another go back to its first farm families assisting one another," according to the book Briefly, Berkley by Shirley McLellan, which is available at the .

For Baker, the flag and the motto are all part of life in Berkley.

“Here, we really get to know each other as a community, with our fantastic neighborhoods where you can walk your dog or push your stroller,” Baker said.

“With nearby schools and a vibrant downtown ... all the great things on 12 Mile and Coolidge. When I think about Berkley, I think about its community, and it is well-regarded for all it has to offer. It’s close to everything, and it’s a terrific place to be.”

See the original Berkley flag at the  2-4 p.m. Sundays, except holidays.