The Star-Spangled Banner

Whoosh. Imagine being so big that the wind can make you dance high above a giant stone fort. That’s me. All through one very long night, the sky lit up with flashes of orange and red light. BOOM. The whole world would shake from the sound of cannons. WHOOSH-BANG. Bright red rockets zipped through the smoky air like angry fireflies. It was very loud and a little scary, and the air smelled like smoke. The soldiers in the fort wondered if their home would be safe. They looked up at me, hoping I would make it through the night. When the sun finally peeked out, I was still there, waving in the misty morning air, even with a few tears in my fabric. I am a giant flag, with fifteen stars and fifteen stripes. My name is the Star-Spangled Banner.

I wasn’t always a famous flag. My story began with a needle and thread in the hot summer of 1813. A very talented woman named Mary Pickersgill and her helpers, including her own daughter, sewed me together. And when I say I was big, I mean I was gigantic. That’s a big word for super-duper big. I was so huge that I couldn't fit in a normal house. They had to ask for permission to use the giant floor of a nearby brewery, a place where they made drinks, just to have enough room to lay me all out. Can you imagine a flag so big it takes up a whole room. They carefully stitched together long pieces of bright red and white wool fabric to make my fifteen stripes. For my starry part, they used a deep blue fabric, the color of the sky just after sunset. Each of my fifteen white stars was about two feet wide. That's as big as two rulers put together. I was made especially for the brave soldiers at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. They wanted a flag so big that everyone, even ships far out on the water, could see it and feel brave.

The most important day of my life was the morning of September 14th, 1814. The big, loud battle was finally over. A man named Francis Scott Key was on a ship nearby. He was a lawyer, and he had watched the cannons and rockets all night long, worried about the fort and the people inside. Through the smoke and the morning fog, he used a special spyglass to look for me. His heart must have been beating so fast. Was I still there. Yes. When he saw me still flying, waving proudly in the wind, his heart filled up with so much relief and happiness. He knew the soldiers had not given up. He was so inspired that he grabbed a pen and wrote a beautiful poem on the back of a letter he had in his pocket. He wrote about the rockets' red glare and the bombs bursting in air, and about me, the flag, still being there. Later, his amazing poem was set to the music of a popular song, and it became America's national anthem. Today, you can visit me in a museum where I am kept safe. And every time you hear that special song, you are hearing my story—a story of hope that still shines as brightly as my stars.