Printing company donating Louisiana flag book to schools, libraries | Arts & Culture

BATON ROUGE -  In recognition of Louisiana’s bicentennial,  Moran Printing of Baton Rouge has published a history of the official Louisiana State flag and is donating nearly 2,000 copies to the public schools and public libraries in the state.

Becky Vance, President and Chief Operating Officer, said that Moran’s management is committed to educating Louisiana’s children about the flag’s colorful history.  She said she is very proud that one of Moran’s employees was co-designer of the flag. 

“Our Flag has a great story, including how volunteer citizens rallied to the call to capture its history and ensure the new design was true to our heritage,” Vance said. 

Vance said when she learned about the history and that, until now, there has been no comprehensive history of our flag written, she jumped at the chance to get the story of the flag to Louisiana school children and citizens.

Two Baton Rouge citizens, Glen Duncan and Curtis Vann, volunteered to design the flag when the legislature amended state law to include “an appropriate display of three drops of blood” on the Pelican’s breast.

“Symbolically, the Pelican is wounding itself to feed its young, presumably to depict a state that cares for its citizens,” said Duncan, “I say ‘presumably’, because we can find no clear reason why our first governor chose this image.

Duncan researched the legal and historical tradition of the flag before working on the design and is the author of the book “A Modern History of the Louisiana Pelican Flag, or a tale of the surprisingly difficult quest for the “Official” state flag.

Curtis Vann, the flag’s artist, said until the state officially adopted the new version, complete with exact specifications as to color and style, Louisiana really had no official flag.  In fact, he said, several versions of the flag still fly over the capital.

The state law that called for the new flag design did not require state agencies to immediately obtain or fly one.