San Diego Flag Girl, 1921

My paternal grandmother Elizabeth Long was San Diego's Flag Girl in 1921 for a Daughters of the American Revolution event.

San Diego had recently decided to preserve Balboa Park after the Panama–California Exposition of 1915. In January 1921, a San Diego Union editorial started the ball rolling by arguing: "Aside from all artistic or merely sentimental considerations, San Diego cannot afford to let this beautiful picture fade. Balboa Park is not a luxury to be maintained merely for the pleasure of San Diego; it is a necessary of our civic life and a profitable adjunct of our future metropolitan development. To keep this wonderful possession and to make the most of its limitless resources of beauty and pleasure is the main object of those who have organized the Mid-Winter exposition movement. Its purpose should appeal to every San Diegan, every public-spirited citizen and every lover of the beautiful in art and nature."

Everyone was also in a patriotic mood in 1921, what with WWI recently ending, the inauguration of the first American president whose election involved the women's vote, and the first Miss America was crowned. Sure, Prohibition was also in full swing, but according to my grandmother, that didn't get anybody's spirits down because everyone knew a bootlegger or two.