The Flag Lady’s Flag Store

Mary Leavitt acquired the "Flag Lady" nickname when the Chicago Sun Times wrote an article about her in the early-1980s.

Iran was in crisis. Americans were being held hostage. The whole world was tense. In 1979, Mary Leavitt’s son was deployed with the US Navy in the Mediterranean.

“There was a disc jockey saying, ‘Fly your flag. Put a candle in your window and a yellow ribbon around the tree,’” she remembers.

They were just the symbols the nation needed at that moment. She decided to make it happen for her house in, appropriately enough, Libertyville, Illinois.

“We had moved from our apartment to our house and I couldn’t find my flag,” Mary says. “And I went out to buy a flag and there were no flags. It wasn’t flag season.” She was as surprised as anyone to discover that flags have a season.

She searched high and low. Finally, 40 miles away, she found a guy with flags. But it was a Saturday. He was closed. He was only in the shop to do some paperwork. Besides, he explained to her, his sales were wholesale only.

“Would you give me some flags and I’ll go door to door and sell them retail for you?,” she asked. “And he said, ‘Who do you think I am, the Avon lady of the flag world?’”

But she persisted and, eventually, he acquiesced. Without so much as a deposit, he gave her a dozen flags and told her to come back the next Saturday with either the flags or the money. She was sold out by Wednesday. She was such a success, the wholesaler gave her more flags and told her to go hit up some businesses. She preferred residential sales, but considered commercial calls as “payback time” because he had given her a first chance.

On a winter day with snow halfway up her legs, Mary trudged into the Libertyville Savings and Loan where George Francis introduced himself as the bank’s president.

“I said, ‘I’m selling Old Glory from the trunk of my car and I noticed that your flag is torn and tattered.’ And he got tears in his eyes. And I thought, ‘Oh my what did I say wrong?,’” she recalls. “And he said, ‘I am a World War II veteran and I certainly will replace Old Glory.’”

A newspaper reporter happened to be in the bank that day and heard the whole thing. As Francis went to get some cash for a flag, the reporter asked Mary if he could tell her story. The article appeared a few days later on an inside page of the local paper. But that was enough for the suburban editions of the Chicago Sun Times to pick it up. In that version, a photo of Mary surrounded by the Stars and Stripes carried a caption that read, “Meet the Flag Lady.”

Mary didn’t know it at the time but she had just acquired a new nickname. Those pivotal clippings still hang in pristine frames, in a hallway just outside the shop’s offices.

When she and her husband, Tom, moved back to Columbus in the early 1980s, Mary was still selling flags.

“I’d get up in the morning, my husband would go to work and I’d get in the car and I’d drive all over Ohio and sell flags,” she says with a slight chuckle.

But her supplies had taken over the living room, a bedroom, the hallway and the basement. She was getting ready to take over another bedroom when Tom had an idea.

The Flag Lady's Flag Shop is full of banners and flags of all kinds.

“‘Maud,’ he said, ‘you need a store. Let’s get you a store. I can’t walk in the front door and I can’t walk down the hallway because there are 20-foot flag poles are hanging out.’”

The first shop was on Indianola Avenue, not too far from their house. And for the first time, at Tom’s suggestion, Mary used the nickname; she was now, officially, “The Flag Lady” and this was the Flag Lady’s Flag Shop. Years later, with a little help and encouragement from some of the Columbus area’s most famous business names, Mary was able to buy a building on High Street.

Business is steady. Even through down economic times, flags are always seem to be in demand. But, Mary says, there are spikes in sales after significant events like the September 11th attacks, the death of Osama Bin Laden or the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas.

“The one thing I’ve noticed about selling the flag is that if we didn’t listen to the radio or TV and didn’t know what was happening, within 24 to 48 hours, we would know that something patriotic has happened,” she says.

The Flag Lady's Flag Shop sells, makes and repairs all kinds of flags.

While the shop is brimming with ready-made flags, a team of seamstresses also makes custom flags. They make the enormous Block-O flags that Brutus Buckeye carries into Ohio Stadium before each football game. (The very first Brutus for whom she made the giant flag more than two decades ago still comes to visit Mary and the shop on a regular basis.) The sewing team also makes dozens of corporate flags, school flags and even seasonal holiday flags. They do intricate repair work as well.

Even at 75 years old, Mary is in the shop every day, proudly wearing her red, white and blue, and usually with an American flag lapel pin, just for good measure.

“I don’t remember not having red, white and blue,” she says. “When my brother [Bobby] went into the war, my mother dressed me in red, white and blue.”

God and country were some of the most important concepts in her childhood home. “My mother had a rule in the home: don’t lay anything on top of the Bible and don’t let the flag touch the floor. And God help you if you did either one of those things.”

The Flag Lady's grandparents, Mary Haley and William Dexter Haley. Mrs. Haley kept a small flag in her purse, always prepared for the chance to wave it.

Mary’s family boasts generations of patriotic Americans. Her ancestors came to the American Colonies from Ireland and later fought in the Revolutionary War. Other family members served in the War of 1812, the Battle of Tippecanoe and her great-grandfather was a captain in the Civil War. Her brother fought in World War II. In 2011, her grandson returned from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As if family history weren’t enough, Mary’s grandmother instilled in her a special relationship with the flag. Her grandmother was never without a small American flag.

“And I noticed it and I said, ‘Grandma Haley, why do you always carry that flag in your purse?’ And she said, ‘Who knows, Mary Margaret, I may get a chance to wave it today.”

To this day, Mary makes sure her own children have small flags at the ready.

Mary says the shop has become a meeting place. People are drawn to it. Some visitors aren’t even sure why they feel the need to be there, they just know it’s important. They come from all over Ohio, all over the midwest. They even arrive by the busload. Mary greets every one of them personally, asks where they’re from and lets them decide whether to start a conversation. Most do. And many talk about their experience as veterans, relatives of veterans or their commitment to the flag.

She gives pamphlets to visitors to help them understand the flag’s history and symbolism.

After years of selling flags out of her car and her basement, the Flag Lady was able to open her first shop on Indianola Avenue in Columbus. The current shop faces High Street, Route 23.

“When you look at it, the red stands for courage and valor, the white for liberty and purity, the blue for justice, loyalty and perseverance and the five-pointed star for infinity or forever,” she says, tearing up a bit. Even after working with it every day for decades, the emotional attachment to the flag still gets her a little choked up.

The Flag Lady could have retired years ago. But this is where she wants to be.

“I can take off any time I want. I can do what I want. But I love coming in here. It’s my life.”

It’s a passion.

“Thank you, sir, for coming in. God bless you and God bless America,” she says to the man walking out of the store. He just bought two flags.

Where to Find It: 4567 North High Street, Columbus, OH 43214. Phone: 614.263.1776 or 800.797.FLAG. Parking: Follow the alley that runs behind the shop. A small parking lot can handle a half-dozen cars or so. www.flagladyohio.com

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