June 14 is Flag Day — which is almost a forgotten holiday. Who really thinks about flags?
Portlander Ted Kaye does. He’s a hobby vexillologist — a mouthful of a name for a flag enthusiast.
Ted Kaye hoists a Croatian flag from his second-story window at his Forest Park home in Northwest Portland, where it hangs over the street. He display information about the flag on a display board for his neighbors.
Lillian Karabaic / OPB
Kaye has a lot of flag: city flags, country flags, state flags, and even flags made of hundreds of other flags.
“I have enough to fly a different flag every day for a year,” said Kaye.
Kaye has written or edited thousands of pages of flag scholarship, including a book on flag design, “‘Good’ Flag, ‘Bad’ Flag”. He’s also consulted on flag design for over 200 different cities, states, and even countries. And he was even in the room when the city of Portland’s now-iconic green, blue, and yellow flag was adopted in 2002.
Kaye has traveled all over the world to bring flags back to Portland, as trophies.
“Flags are my tourist mementos, and I have two rules for my collection,” he said. “The first is I have to have been to the place in order to own the flag. And the second rule is the flag itself has to come from that place.” Kaye said flags are the perfect souvenir, “because they don’t break in your luggage.”
“If I could talk to my prior self of 40 years ago starting to collect flags, I would've said collect four-by-six-inch flags, not full-size flags,” said Ted Kaye. He has flags of all stripes (and stars). As of May 2024, his collection had 389 unduplicated flags and over 500 duplicated flags.
Lillian Karabaic / OPB
Over 40 years, that’s added up to over 500 flags. Kaye says there’s been more than a few times where he’s had to convince his wife to take a quick hop over an international or state border just to get the flag. Once, he got a flag from a combination nail salon/flag store outside of Vienna, Austria.
“My wife believes with some truth that I want to travel to get the flag from the place,” he chuckled.
For decades, those flags sat in Tupperware storage tubs, folded into ziplock bags, and slowly took over floor space in Kaye’s home. “If I could talk to my prior self of 40 years ago starting to collect flags, I would’ve said collect four-by-six-inch flags, not full-size flags,” said Kaye.
When the COVID-19 lockdowns began, Kaye’s neighbors started taking more walks and he had an idea to put those flags to use.
“I realized that one thing I could do is display a different flag every day and entertain my neighbors.” So he strung a line out the window of a second-story bedroom, spanning the entire width of his Forest Park street in Northwest Portland. The line fits four to six flags across.
“And eventually my son gave me an electronic reader board where I can announce what the flag is and why I’m flying it that day.”
For Mother's Day, Ted Kaye hung up three state flags, Mississippi, Ohio, and Maryland. Together they spell out M-O-M, which is noted on his display board.
Lillian Karabaic / OPB
He doesn’t have strict rules for which flags get displayed.
“I try to pick a flag that honors that day in some way. Say an admissions day for a state or some public holiday in a country, I’ll pull that flag out and fly it,” said Kaye. “If I don’t have a flag for that day, then I’ll fly one just that I like.”
Kaye’s displays have become a favorite of the neighbors. “Many come by every day to see what flag is flying,” said Kaye. Not all the flags represent places. On April 15, he flew a double-sided $10 bill flag.
Ted Kaye stands next to a flag the shows every country's flag — plus a few other flags, like the EU flag — which he uses as a teaching tool.
Lillian Karabaic / OPB
His wife, Debbie, is supportive of his flag habit. He even designed a personal flag for her in 1986 which won first prize in the flag design competition of the San Francisco City Fair.
“She likes to say, however, that it may be called vexillology because it’s vexing and silly,” he chuckled.
And while Kaye’s not primarily a designer, he is an advocate for good flag design. “Nobody pays me, but it’s wonderful to be able to share flag knowledge and flag design knowledge across the country and even in different countries,” he said. “Because most of the public doesn’t understand flag design.”
Kaye holds up the Chinook Indian Nation flag. Kaye has supported many tribes with the process of designing their flags. He wrote the book "Flags of the Native Peoples of the United States."
Lillian Karabaic / OPB
Kaye recently helped the state of Minnesota with their new flag design, and he thinks it’s high time Oregon consider a flag redesign. “There are many people in Oregon who would like to see the flag changed,” said Kaye. “There’s actually a wave of state flag change sweeping the country.”
Ted Kaye holds a Croatian flag, part of his collection of over 500 flags. “Flags are my tourist mementos, and I have two rules for my collection,” he said. “The first is I have to have been to the place in order to own the flag. And the second rule is the flag itself has to come from that place.”
Lillian Karabaic / OPB
What’s wrong with Oregon’s flag?
One, it’s expensive. It’s the only U.S. state flag that has two different sides, making it twice as expensive to produce.
And it’s an “S.O.B.,” according to the parlance of flag design enthusiasts. That stands for “Seal on a Bed Sheet,” where the state seal just sits on a plain background. Kaye said S.O.B.’s are not actually great flags because “You can’t actually make out what’s on the flag when it’s flying at a distance. And that’s the fundamental problem with those flags.”
Flags on the Senate floor at the Oregon State Capitol, May 18, 2021 in Salem, Ore.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
But designing a new flag takes time. Ever the vexillologist, Ted Kaye thinks it is worth it.
“Flags are more than just symbols; they tell stories and represent the identities of places and people,” he said.
And if and when Oregon does design a new flag, rest assured Ted Kaye will fly it from his house in Northwest Portland.
