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Lorain, Ohio (U.S.)

Lorain County

image by Eugene Ipavec, 8 March 2009

Description of the Flag

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Description of the Flag

I received from the City Clerk a PDF containing the Ordinance and image of the flag.

Description of the flag: a blue background with two white stars in the upper-left corner and two white stars in the lower-right corner. The center will be surrounded by a green wreath with gold ribbon. (Note that the seal is altered).

The document lacks the date, but according to the Ordinance number 178-73, it is possible flag was adopted in 1973. (And the design looks like the 70's.)

Valentin Poposki, 6 March 2009

The municipality of Lorain (70,592 inhabitants in 2006; 6,280 ha) is located on Lake Erie, west of Cleveland. Lorain is the birth town of the writer Toni Morrison (b. 1931), awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. The Lorain Lighthouse is the "Jewel of the Port" of Lorain. Its unique white and red silhouette has been depicted on hundreds of items, including the cover of the Lorain County phonebook and the 1990 state map of Ohio. While the first light station was established in Lorain in 1837 and succeeded by a "beacon building" in 1898, the exact year of building of the lighthouse we know today is not known, sometimes between 1898 and 1917. The latter year is considered as the most probable for the completion of the structure of the lighthouse. Powered with electric light in 1932, the Lorain Lighthouse was taken over by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1939. In 1965, the lighthouse was decommissioned and slated for demolition and replacement by an automatic light built in the new port. Concerned citizens of Lorain started a very long struggle for the preservation of the lighthouse, supported by the Lorain County Historical Society. The Society eventually purchased the Lorain Lighthouse in 1977, for 1 $; in December 1978, the lighthouse was placed on National Register of Historic Places. On 12 February 1990, the Port of Lorain Foundation which had been incorporated on 26 December 1989, purchased the Lorain Lighthouse from the Lorain County Historical Society, again for 1 $. The complete restoration of the lighthouse started in 1992 and is still going on.
http://www.lorainlighthouse.com (Port of Lorain Foundation website)

Quoting "The Morning Journal", 17 April 2008, "Lorain Lighthouse flag unfurled":
"The swallowtail design is patterned upon and proudly imitates the unique ''Ohio Burgee,'' the flag of the state of Ohio. The blue semi-circle represents the blue sky over Lake Erie. It is outlined in gold, representing the light generated by our fourth order Fresnel lens which shines upon our roads and waterways represented by the red and white stripes. The top red stripe represents the state of Ohio, the middle stripe represents the city of Lorain and the lower stripe represents the Lorain lighthouse, the famous ''Jewel of the Port.' Lorain County is represented by the outline of the lighthouse official logo. The star shines above the lighthouse and locates its position on Lake Erie."
http://www.morningjournal.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19491816&BRD=1699&PAG=461&dept_id=46371&rfi=6 (no longer available)
Ivan Sache, 24 April 2008