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![[Greenville, Indiana flag]](../images/u/us-ingrv.jpg)
image located by Dave Fowler, 16 January 2019
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A green flag with seal - a green disk with yellow ring and a bison in the center.
GREENVILLE — After 50 years, the Greenville town flag is back.
The flag, which has been lost for more than a decade, recently caught the attention of the Greenville Historic Preservation Commission. “We heard about the story of the flag early on in our development as a commission and set the reproduction of the flag as a top priority,” Matt Uhl, chairman of the commission, said in a news release. “There was a group of locals commenting about the flag online and trying to figure out where the original flag went. There were rumors Greenville Elementary had the flag, that the flag was hidden in the basement of Town Hall, and that descendants of the flag’s designer had possession of the flag.”
In 1969, Elaine Evans and Vic Warren established a contest for the fifth grade of Greenville Elementary to design a flag to represent the Town of Greenville. The contest was sponsored by the Town Council and the Greenville Park Board. Glenn Burkhart was named the winner, with his design of an American bison on a green background, surrounded by a yellow band commemorating the town’s name and the year it was founded. Glenn’s vision for a flag was green and gold, which represented Greenville’s school colors back then. The bison represents early travel through the region using the Buffalo Trace which runs just south of U.S. 150 and Greenville.
Through the years and various attempts, the original flag was never located. Established in 2016 by town councilman Andy Lemon, then just a regular citizen, the Greenville Historic Preservation Commission set its sights on reproducing the Greenville town flag for the Floyd County Bicentennial. “We had to use Glenn’s original drawing from 1969 and a picture from the original flag dedication ceremony to re-create the flag. The research and design process was very comprehensive and meticulous,” Lemon said. “We did extensive research and discovered Glenn’s original picture had a brown buffalo but the flag was all green and yellow. It was most likely that the town went to a two-color flag to save money. We wanted to re-create Glenn’s original vision therefore, we had the flag company make the buffalo brown.”
The commission used Oates Flag Co. out of Louisville to reproduce the flag. Oates produced the original Greenville flag designed by Burkhart. “Unfortunately, since 1969 the process for making flags has been improved and all new equipment is used,” Reggie Oates said. The new flag had to be designed from scratch. The Historic Preservation Commission worked closely with an artist from Oates Flag Co. to design and edit a digital image of the reproduced Greenville Flag. Lemon said “we wanted it to be a perfect reflection of the original design.”
Thanks to donations made by each of the members of the Greenville Historic Preservation Commission, work on a new design was commissioned, allowing Glenn Burkhart’s flag to once again be displayed in Greenville. “It will be nice to once again honor Glenn Burkhart’s vision of Greenville and to do it on the flag’s 50th anniversary,” Uhl said. As part of the 2019 Floyd County Bicentennial, Greenville held a flag rededication ceremony Jan. 14.
Dave Fowler, 16 January 2019