The goal was to create a standard design for the South Carolina state flag that residents could surround, fly from their balconies or proudly display on T-shirts, mugs and caps. But a proposal to redesign the beloved palm tree on the flag did not exactly make the hearts swell with pride of the state.
A person said it looked like a toilet brush. Others said it looked like one of the hearts of palm hit by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Still others compared it to the small abandoned Christmas tree from the 1965 television classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.
Scott Malyerck, a political consultant who helped create the project as a member of the South Carolina State Flag Study Committee, said with some understatement that the tree “was not loved uniformly by all South Carolina residents” .
“I read hundreds of comments,” he said, adding that everyone seemed to have an opinion. “It is difficult to reach a quintessential palm tree that everyone will be in favor of.”
The panel met for the first time in 2018 and presented its final recommendations in March, but the redesigned palmetto did not gain much attention until recently, when the Post and Courier of Charleston, SC, reported on the design and was inundated with complaints that the tree was “horrible” and “terrible!”
“It turns out that people hate it,” reported the newspaper. “They really hate it.”
Ronnie W. Cromer, a state senator who helped create the flag study committee, said that as a result of the adverse reaction, he planned to ask the committee members, who worked with historians and graphic designers, to create a more attractive heart of palm. to represent the state.
“I can’t say it was the most beautiful design I’ve ever seen,” said Cromer. “It would be nice to have a tree with a more beautiful appearance.”
The proposed redesign is expected to spark passions in South Carolina, given the popularity of the heart of palm, the state’s official tree, in clothing, beach towels and other products, Malyerck said.
The panel said that the South Carolina flag – which also has a blue background and a half moon – was “one of the most attractive, recognizable and marketable state flags in the country”.
The panel did not want to change the traditional symbols of the flag, but felt that it was necessary to create a standard version because the state had not had an official design for the flag since 1940, when the flag code was revoked.
As a result, the panel said, flag makers have produced their own versions, each with slight differences in the color, layout and shape of the symbols.
“The idea is just to make it historically accurate and uniform,” said Malyerck. “Flag makers should not decide how they should look.”
To make its recommendations, the panel thoroughly investigated the history and vexilology of South Carolina, the study of flags.
The panel chose a private indigo for the fund after noting that officers of the 2nd Regiment of South Carolina, commanded by Colonel William Moultrie during the Revolutionary War, wore uniforms of that color.
These blue uniforms also inspired Moultrie to create the first South Carolina flag using the same color, the panel said. The indigo dye, grown in South Carolina’s Lowcountry at the time of the Revolution, made blue a logical choice.
In designing the crescent, the committee examined examples of periods on the Moultrie flag, as well as crescent moon emblems worn on Revolutionary War caps.
But the panel acknowledged that “perhaps the most difficult task the committee faced in its work was the adoption of an appropriate and historic palm to appear on the flag”.
The heart of palm is a revered symbol of the defeat of the British fleet at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island. The fort was built with palm heart logs, which absorbed the impact of cannonballs, according to the Legislative Assembly website.
Finally, the committee based its design for the tree on a 1910 pencil sketch by Ellen Heyward Jervey, a Charleston artist and librarian, who provided drawings of crescents and palm hearts that were used by a state official, AS Salley , to draw the state flag that year.
“We wanted her to have the credit,” said W. Eric Emerson, director of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, who served on the panel. “This is the same time that the 19th Amendment was being passed. This was a woman who contributed to her efforts to create the South Carolina state flag and received no credit for it. ”
But Mr. Emerson said that Ms. Jervey’s sketch proved difficult to translate into a palm tree “which looks like what people are used to”.
“So that’s how we ended up with what we had,” he said.
Mr. Cromer said that the public spoke and that changes would have to be made.
“We have listened to our constituents,” he said, “and we are returning to the design of this tree.”