Thomas Demski, 72; Owned Largest U.S. Flag

Regularly borrowed for Super Bowls, college bowl games, other sports events and veterans parades, the giant flags provided through Demski's Super Flag company were snapped up to cover the field at Dodger Stadium for the first home game and the Rose Bowl field for UCLA's first football game after the disaster. In October, the ailing Demski traveled to ground zero in New York to fly one of his giant flags from a construction crane.

Demand grew so much that the Web site www.superflag.com run by Demski and his close friend, former Coast Guard commander Jim Alexander, had to be expanded at considerable expense to them. Never profitable, the enterprise cost plenty transporting the flags for display.

Even before Sept. 11 led many Americans to embrace patriotism, Demski said that in his two decades of owning and unfurling flags across the country, he never had any flags vandalized.

"The flag, I guess, is one thing everyone understands," he said in December.

Born and reared in Nanticoke, Pa., where he began working in the coal mines as a teenager, Demski moved to Southern California in the 1970s. After a back injury disabled him from his construction job, he found time for patriotism.

Flags became Demski's raison d'etre about 1980 when he was driving along the San Diego Freeway and saw a giant flag flying outside an automobile dealership.

"I thought, that really looks good," he recalled. "I thought, why not try that?"

So he drove home and erected the $16,000, 132-foot flagpole--designated The Pole in honor of his Polish heritage--and began buying flags.

As his hair whitened, he started playing Santa Claus at Christmas and many years converted the flagpole into a giant Christmas tree.

He also staged patriotic celebrations on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and other holidays, evolving into one of Long Beach's best-known characters.

Not everybody loved Demski's preoccupation with flags in those days. The Long Beach City Council tried to impose a height limit, saying his flagpole was too tall for a residence. Demski countered by proposing to replace it with a 300-foot pole. They let the existing one stand.

A neighbor took him to court over the noise made by his giant flag flapping through the night. His supporters rallied, and that complaint also went glimmering.

Demski did not stop with fabric flags. He painted flags on his house, on his collection of hearses, trailers, a firetruck, and inside his house on the walls, floor and light switches.