The Weirton Daily Times | Editorial

Celebrating our role in history

The work of a Weirton artist will become part of an important project Friday.

Savanah Schroll Guz will travel to Charleston to take part in a ceremony during which the 34th stripe will be added to the Her Flag project.

The brainchild of Oklahoma-based artist Marilyn Artus, the flag has been designed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. It measures 18-by-26 feet and, when finished, will include 36 distinctive stripes, each designed by a female artist who represents one of the original states that ratified the amendment.

Guz’s 26-foot stripe, which will be sown onto the flag during a ceremony that will begin at 10 a.m. and will be livestreamed, depicts four figures who had important roles in West Virginia’s push for ratification: Dr. Harriett Jones, the state’s first licensed female physician and first woman elected to the state House of Delegates; Lenna Lowe Yost, president of the Equal Suffrage Association and Women’s Christian Temperance Union and director of the Women’s Division of the national Republican Party; state Sen. Jesse Bloch, who cut short a California vacation to return to West Virginia to break a 14-14 deadlock on the amendment; and Ada Enid Alderman Ford, the first woman to be elected to the Democratic State Executive Committee.

It includes significant dates from the state’s suffrage history as well as the state flower, a rhododendron.

As part of Friday’s presentation, Guz, who is the president and executive director of the Weirton Area Museum and Cultural Center, will wear a special T-shirt she designed that recognizes Florence Anderson and Goldie Vindish, who worked at Weirton Steel during World War II.

The Her Flag project serves as a reminder of an important moment in our country’s history, and thanks to the work of Guz, it’s one the Weirton area can be proud to be a part of.