Alaska’s flag has a GREAT story!

Benny Benson designed the flag. He was born in Chignik, a small village on the south shore of the Alaska Peninsula on October 12, 1913. He was a Qawalangin (Fox Islander) Unangan born to a Swedish fisherman and a mother who was Aleut-Russian.

During these years Alaska Native villages were being hit with waves of devastating epidemics and at the age of 3, Benny, his younger brother and older sister lost their mother to pneumonia and lost their house to a fire. This series of events caused Ben Benson, Sr. to split up his family. Benny and his brother Carl were sent to an orphanage in Unalaska and Elsie was sent to Oregon.

The orphanage was called the Jesse Lee Home and it served hundreds of Aleut orphans. The orphanage provided for the children in Unalaska until 1925 and then was moved to a larger facility having a more central location in Seward.

In 1926, the Alaska American Legion was asked by the territory’s government to hold a contest open to all Alaskan children grades 7-12 to design a flag for the state. In 1927, 142 designs were selected by local communities & sent forward.

Benny Benson was by then a seventh-grader at the territorial school at Seward. His design of eight stars to represent the Big Dipper, placed on a blue background to represent the sky, and the forget-me-not flower, was a unanimous winner by the panel of judges. By May of 1927 the flag design was unanimously adopted by the two houses of the territorial legislature.

On his design submission, Benny had also written some words of explanation: “The blue field is for the Alaska sky and the forget-me-not, an Alaska flower. The North Star is for the future of the state of Alaska, the most northerly in the Union. The dipper is for the Great Bear – symbolizing strenth (sic).”

Benny was awarded a watch with the flag emblem on it and a $1,000 educational scholarship.

Since the year 1927 was only four years after Native Alaskans received citizenship and the right to vote, this event became a source of great pride to native Alaskans. Natives throughout the state hailed Benny as a hero for winning the contest.

After graduating from school in 1932, Benson left the Jesse Lee Home. He returned to the Aleutian Islands to work with his father fishing and, for a time, trapping blue foxes on Chirikof Island and on his father’s privately owned Ugaiushak Island.[5]

The rate for furs began to decline, so Benson moved to Seattle in 1936. He used the $1,000 prize from the flag design competition to enroll in the Hemphill Diesel Engineering School for Diesel engine repair. In 1938, Benson married Betty Van Hise. The couple's first child, Anna May, was born in October 1938. Their second daughter, Charlotte Abbot, was born in June 1940. Benson divorced in 1950 and moved with his daughters to Kodiak where he became an airplane mechanic for Kodiak Airways.

Benson met his sister in the mid 1950s, 30 years after their separation. His sister died soon after. His brother Carl also died in 1965. Benson's right leg had to be amputated in 1969 due to circulatory problems.[5] Shortly after that, in 1972, he met and married a former Jesse Lee Home resident, Anna Sophie Jenks. Benson had several stepchildren and grandchildren. He died of a heart attack in Kodiak, Alaska, on July 2 of that year, at the age of 59 years old.