IN TRIBUTE TO NEWT HEISLEY

Daily Breeze

Displayed prominently in my District office is an autographed medal featuring the POW/MIA flag.  It was given to me and signed by Newt Heisley, the designer of the famous image.  The black-and-white flag is a symbol of a Nation’s gratitude, respect and commitment to those who never came back.  In 1998, legislation I authored was signed into law mandating that the flag be flown above federal buildings on six days a year, including Veterans and Memorial Day.  We will never forget.

Newt Heisley died on May 18, at 88.  He led a rich life committed to serving his country, to family, and to his artistic passion – forces that would ultimately inform the design of his seminal work. 

In the early 1940s, after graduating from Syracuse University with a Fine Arts degree, Heisley joined the Army Air Forces – where he served heroically as a pilot in the Pacific Theatre in World War II.

After the war, Heisley put his artistic talent to work, joining an advertising agency in New Jersey – where he lived with his wife, Bunny, and son, Jeffrey.  Hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps, Jeffrey entered Marine Corps training, but returned emaciated and sick with hepatitis.

Soon after his son’s homecoming in 1971, Heisley was tasked with designing a flag for the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.  Heisley settled on a silhouette of a gaunt man, barbed wire and guard tower.  Below that, he wrote “You are not forgotten.” 

To Heisley’s surprise, the flag became a national icon.  In 1988, it flew over the White House for the first time, and in 1990, Congress adopted it as the official symbol of appreciation for POWs and MIAs.  

Despite the newfound fame, Heisley kept his humility.  “I did it for the men who were prisoners of war or missing in action.  They're the real heroes," he told the Denver Post in 2002, the same year he wrote his autobiography, Faith Under Fire. 

This Memorial Day, I will be thinking of them – and Newt Heisley.  In the words of my dear friend Dave Albert, the former Lomita Councilman whose failed attempt to get his local post office to fly the POW/MIA flag was the inspiration for the 1998 law, Heisley “was a true patriot for the POW/MIA cause, and he will never be forgotten.”

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