This Is the Story Behind the POW/MIA Flag

National POW/MIA Recognition Day may be Friday, but many Americans are accustomed to seeing the now-familiar flag of their cause — the silhouette and white letters on a black background — flying outside post offices, military properties, hospitals and government buildings all year round. Far less well-known are the people who created the flag. Mary Hoff of Orange Park, Fla., gets credit for coming up with the idea for such a flag. She had just given birth to her fifth child when her husband, Navy Lieutenant Commander Michael Hoff, was shot down in a flight over Laos in 1970, during the Vietnam War. His body was unaccounted for. “I once asked in Washington, ‘What do I bury?'” she told the Florida Times-Union in 2009. “And they said, ‘Well, we’ll give you all the artifacts from the aircraft.'” Sensing that other families might want something more ceremonious, she asked a New Jersey graphic design company called Annin & Co. to create a flag that fellow members of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing could rally around. The company hired illustrator Newton “Newt” Heisley for the job. And for Heisley, the mission felt personal. “I used to fly within range of the Japanese and wondered how I would hold up if I ever got captured,” the World War II veteran once said, according to the company’s site. He ended up basing the gaunt, silhouetted profile on the flag on that ...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Holidays Military remembrance Source Type: news