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By Pam Meister, President and CEO, The Charlotte Museum of History What has flown over both the North and South Poles, is blue, gold and white, and has images of a liberty cap and hornet’s nest on it? Charlotte’s Pole to Pole Flag! Charlotte’s Pole to Pole Flag exhibit, which opened December 2006, traces the flag’s journey beginning with Charlotte businessman George M. Ivey, a world traveler who wanted to set foot on all seven continents. In 1964 he was invited to join the US Navy’s “Operation Deep Freeze” Antarctic expedition team. Knowing that he would have the opportunity to stand at the South Pole, Ivey wanted to bring along a Charlotte city flag to fly there. The city didn’t have one to give him, so he asked some of his employees at the J. B. Ivey Department Store to create a smaller version of the flag to take. Ivey’s expedition flew first to Washington, D.C., then to Hawaii, on to New Zealand, then finally to Antarctica. On December 5, 1964, Ivey flew the Charlotte Flag at the South Pole. Twenty-one years later, in 1985, this same flag accompanied George Ivey’s nephew Ervin Jackson, Jr. on an expedition to the North Pole. Jackson did not attempt his quest alone; some very famous people were with him on this expedition including, explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, adventurer J. Stephen Fossett, and astronaut Neil Armstrong. Visit The Charlotte Museum of History and see Charlotte’s Pole to Pole Flag. It is believed that through Ivey’s and Jackson’s efforts, this Charlotte flag became the only United States city flag ever to have been flown over both the North and South Poles. The exhibit gives visitors the opportunity to feel inside authentic polar mittens and boots; compare and contrast facts and figures about Charlotte and the two Poles; and trace the expeditions on a special rotating globe. |
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The Charlotte
Museum of History & Hezekiah Alexander Homesite |