History

The Bureau of Seasonal Flags exists because of a bequest. In 1938, the estate of Adelaide Frick, an Ostrander dry-goods merchant, left the city $3,000 and forty-one flags of her own design, one for each phase of the year as she understood it, on the condition that one be displayed at all times and rotated 'with appropriate ceremony.' The city attorney's opinion, still on file, concluded that 'appropriate ceremony' implied a responsible officer, and that a responsible officer implied an office. The council established the Bureau by ordinance that November, and a Flag Acceptance Committee of three inventoried the flags, finding all forty-one 'present, hemmed, and various.'

The Bureau's building followed in 1939, when the Works Progress Administration constructed a one-room brick annex behind city hall at a materials cost to the city of $1,900, the labor being federal. The annex contains a desk, the flag cabinet (built to Frick's specifications, with forty-one labeled pigeonholes), and a window facing the flagpole, which predates the annex and is not part of the bequest. The rotation was originally conducted 'as the seasons warranted,' language that produced enough disagreement that in 1946 the council fixed the ceremony to Tuesdays, a day chosen, per the minutes, 'for lack of objections.'

The program has had interruptions. In 1957 the rotation lapsed for eleven weeks when the flag officer was hospitalized and no one else held a key to the cabinet; the council responded with the Continuity of Rotation Resolution, creating a deputy flag officer, an unpaid position that persists. In 1973, a roof leak damaged flags 12 through 19; a local sewing circle restored them over one winter at a billed cost of $340, and the Bureau's ledger notes the repairs are 'visible but dignified.'

The Bureau today operates on six staff-hours per week and is, by most accountings, the smallest standalone office in Ostrander's government. A 2002 feasibility study examined folding it into the Parks Department and found that consolidation would save the city $118 annually. The study's final line — 'not worth the disruption' — was adopted verbatim into the council's resolution retaining the Bureau, and is quoted on a small framed page inside the office.

Local Legends

Residents maintain that flag No. 26, 'Early Corn,' has never actually been flown. The Bureau's ledger indicates it flew in 1961, 1974, and 1988, but the 1961 volume is water-damaged and the entry is contested at the diner most winters.

It is said the flag officer can predict the first frost from the wear on the October flags. The current officer describes this as 'reading too much into mildew,' but has not been recorded predicting a frost incorrectly.

Some claim the original Frick flags were sewn from remaindered dress fabric from her store. The Bureau neither confirms nor denies this, citing, in a 1996 letter, 'a lack of interest on all sides.'

The Controversy

In 1994, a resident argued that the Tuesday changing constitutes a public meeting under Missouri's open-meetings law, since it is conducted by an officer, on a schedule, in view of the public, and would therefore require posted agendas and recorded minutes. The city attorney's response, which ran to nine pages, concluded that the changing is not a meeting but 'a recurring civic gesture,' as no deliberation occurs and no vote can be taken. The resident has attended nearly every changing since, and is on cordial terms with the officer.

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