by Mark Di Ionno, Sunday Star-Ledger
When folks in Westwood, N.J., learned recently that a hometown hero — Sgt. Christopher Hrbek, USMC — had been killed in Afghanistan, a sign went up in Veterans’ Memorial Park: Would everyone please fly the colors on Jan. 21, when the body of Sgt. Hrbek — a 25-year-old who had survived three previous combat tours—passed through Westwood one last time?
Quickly, the flag display at LN Grand, a local five-and-dime, nearly sold out. By the time Sgt. Hrbek’s funeral procession passed through, American flags were on view by the thousands: hanging in every shop window, draped from every building, clutched in every hand along the route.
Almost all the flags on display were made by New Jersey’s Annin & Co., the world’s oldest and largest flag manufacturer. The company makes millions a year—all in the U.S. — for private homes and public buildings, for veterans’ groups, scout troops, and other civic organizations.
“To make the symbol that so many people revere makes us very proud,” says Sandy Dennis Van Lieu, a company vice president and a sixth-generation descendant of founder Alexander Annin. “When I saw the picture in the newspaper of all those flags, well, it was every emotional.”
Alexander Annin began making signal flags for ships in 1820, but by 1847 he was concentrating on Old Glory. His first American flag had only 29 stars. Every U.S. Presidential inauguration since Zachary Taylor’s, in 1849, has included an Annin flag. Annin flags went with Cmdr. Robert Peary to the North Pole (1909), with Adm. Richard Byrd to the South Pole (1929), and with Neil Armstrong to the moon (1969). An Annin flag was the first to unfurl over Iwo Jima (1945) and the first to fly over the ruins of the World Trade Center after 9/11.
“When we stop to think of all the significant events our flags have been part of, well, it’s an indescribable feeling,” Van Lieu says.
The first Annins came to the U.S. from Scotland in the 18th century and were ardent patriots during the Revolution. Their descendents remain stubborn about making their flags here. “It’s important to us that the symbol of America is made in America,” says Carter Beard, also a VP in the family-owned firm.
For much of the last century, Annin flags were made exclusively in Verona, N.J., a suburb of Newark. Today the firm also has factories in Virginia and Ohio. Annin & Co. makes 10,000 varieties of flags, but American flags remain the biggest focus for its 500 or so employees, who sew together a universe of stars and untold miles of stripes each year. The stars are machine-embroidered, and the stripes are stitched together mechanically, but the fields are pieced together by the hands of American workers.
The patriotism that swept the country after 9/11 — and that remained undiminished along the route of Sgt. Hrbek’s funeral procession — keeps the company busier than ever. But Beard doesn’t see it as just business. He sees it as an honor.
“If I had to choose to make a living at one thing,” he says, “making the American flag would be it.”