The basic design has not been altered in 232 years.
Yet, somehow, the flag of the United States did change. A lot. It was transformed, for example, after Francis Scott Key watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814 and wrote "our flag was still there."
Those stars and stripes had grown overnight in the estimation of a new nation.
America spread out. Moved west. Stars were added on the blue field, signifying new states. Now, the flag became a symbol of a people on the move, growing, prospering.
By 1847 the flag waved triumphant over Mexico City. Not everyone was proud of that. If so, redemption came in a war over slavery. Now, Americans fought for others, for ideas and, literally, for the flag, dying to save the actual cloth on bloody fields like Shiloh and Gettysburg.
Come the 20th century, the flag was seen all over the world. Again, it was as something remade. In World War I some saw rescue from carnage, in World War II a crusade. In the Cold War millions ran toward the colors.
Old Glory has seemed a different thing at Washington's swearing-in, then draped over Lincoln's casket, atop Iwo Jima, in the ruins of the World Trade Center and on the surface of the moon. Still, in other ways, she is always the same for Americans, a symbol as profound as community, family, home and freedom and as personal as a barbecue on the Fourth of July.
