Local man's flag design keeps movement flying

One day this week is set aside to mark military sacrifices and open wounds on the national psyche that have lingered for more than four decades.

And even the military is marking it in the quietest way, with little more than the fluttering of Newt Heisley’s unintentionally black flag. The banner has become the symbol of a movement to remember prisoners of war and those missing in action and was designed by a man who is now a Colorado Springs octogenarian.

Heisley, a Springs man who 36 years ago designed the flag that is flown everywhere from federal buildings to Harley-Davidson fenders, said he expects that the POW/MIA cause will someday fade into history.

But the World War II veteran said it’s too soon for the issue that gripped the nation after the Vietnam War to become so low-key, as it will be Friday when the nation marks National POW/MIA Recognition Day.

“We can’t forget because we owe it to the guys who are missing in action and prisoners of war,” said Heisley, a dapper 86-year-old who worked for decades in advertising design.

Heisley never knew that the haunting image he sketched out in pencil in 1971 would become so prolific.

It includes the silhouette of a man under a guard tower and behind barbed wire.

The profile is that of his son, Jeff, and the guard tower is an element he thought up at the time as he scrambled with the design for a client that made flags. Twenty-five Septembers ago, it became the only flag other than the U.S. flag to fly over the White House when President Ronald Reagan marked the first POW/MIA Recognition Day.

Initially, Heisley wanted the design to be in color, maybe purple. But the group that requested the work, the National League of Families, went with the black and white image.

Now the flag seems as prolific as the baby boomers who lived through Vietnam. Biker groups have adopted it and it’s as likely to be seen tattooed on their bodies as it is flying from their bumpers.

That’s everything the National League of Families, which battled the government for years in hope of tracking down missing troops, could have hoped for — a popular symbol that reminds people that not every soldier returned from the war in Vietnam.

One of the top reasons it’s so prolific: Heisley never sought a copyright, permitting everyone and anyone to reproduce his art.

“The only flag that’s more popular is the United States flag,” he said.

Still, Heisley said he thinks his flag will fade into the past as the Vietnam War drifts further into history.

“It think it’s going to happen,” he said. “All things fade someday.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0240 or tom.roeder@gazette.com