His Spirit's Unflagging

By Bill Plaschke

Jan. 1, 2002 12 AM PT

“O ld Glory.”

May she always fly high and free

So reads the inscription at the base of the 132-foot pole in the front yard of the Southland’s star spangled manor.

Thomas “Ski” Demski lives here. He does flags.

Painted on his car, painted on the side of this converted Long Beach duplex, flying so largely atop that pole that he had to fight city fathers to keep it there.

“Something about the flapping being in violation of the noise ordinance,” he says. “But you can’t silence Old Glory.”

Nor its owner, a 72-year-old rascal best described as Old Glorious.

In the cackling home he shares with two dozen birds, Demski has flags on his walls, and over his floors, his light switches and his heart. Literally.

There are flags covering his entire torso, tattooed forever on the chest of the free and the back of the brave.

Right next to the tattooed phone numbers of his doctors.

One of them solemnly met Demski in an examining room last summer.

“Ski, I’ve got bad news for you.”

“What is it, doc?”

“You’ve got my wrong number.”

When it comes to flags, Demski wears them, bares them, dares them.

But mostly, he shares them.

With folks like us, in places we can understand.

Demski is the guy who rents the giant flags to the giant sports events.

The compelling flag that nearly covered the Dodger Stadium field in their first home game after the Sept. 11 tragedy? That odd-looking fellow marching alongside it was Demski.

In exchange for the use of Old Glory, he wanted to appear Half Monty, topless, with his flag tattoos in full view. The Dodgers said no. He brought the flag anyway.

“These are the sacrifices you make,” he said.

That flapping, emotion-building flag that sprawled across the Rose Bowl field in UCLA’s first football game after the tragedy? Demski again.

He has supplied the flags for everything from Army-Navy football games to the Super Bowl. Since the World Trade Center tragedies, he has been working since the dawn’s early light, filling flag orders from a nation that finally shares his national pride.

His latest triumph will appear today, during the pregame show at the Fiesta Bowl, when 300 band members will unfurl a flag the size of the Sun Devil Stadium football field.

If recent flag ceremonies are any indication, some will have tears, others will have goose bumps.

Ski Demski will have a little of both.

Because he is dying.

Talk about your star-spangled ironies.

Just as the rest of the country is catching up to the fervor of one of its leading 72-year-old patriots, the flag man is out of breath.

It’s his heart. He’s already had one multiple bypass operation and the arteries are clogged again and nothing more can be done.

Last summer he passed out twice at home and nearly died.

This winter, for the first time in several years, Demski couldn’t play Santa Claus for the local kids.

For the first time in 15 years, he did not accompany his flag to the Fiesta Bowl.

“All I do is lay around and sleep,” he said.

“I’m fighting to keep him from giving up,” said best friend Jim Alexander.

Demski hopes they broadcast his Fiesta pregame event on television, hopes there are enough people there to spread his flag across the field and give it the respect it deserves.

At the end of a life that Sept. 11 has transformed from eccentric to compelling, Demski fittingly said it’s not about him.

It’s about the flags.

“I’m just waiting to roll over and die,” he said quietly in an interview Sunday in his cluttered home. “But my flags, I have made sure that they will always fly.”

Like any man whose collection includes the world’s largest flag--it cost $80,000, weighs 3,000 pounds, and covers nearly three football fields--Ski Demski can dazzle you with numbers.

But none are more compelling than this:

In 21 years owning and displaying flags in all parts of the country, none have been vandalized.

Nothing stolen, nothing burned, nothing clipped, nothing tagged.

On a street filled with barred windows, his giant flagpole stands unmarked, while a painted flag and surrounding eagle remain untouched.

“The flag, I guess, is one thing everyone understands,” Demski said.

Driving up the freeway 21 years ago, disabled from his construction job because of a back injury, Demski understood.

He saw a giant flag flapping from a pole in front of a car dealership.

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

Unmarried, with no children and no job, perhaps Demski saw the flag as one part of the American dream that he could own.

Seeing as he was never in the military--he worked in the Pennsylvania coal mines, he said--maybe he felt he had some catching up to do.

Whatever the reason, and Demski isn’t exactly sure himself, he drove home and erected the flag pole. And began buying flags. And soon he became one of the few people in the country to buy and rent the big ones.

He made his money printing bumper stickers. But he made his impact with stars and stripes.

“Someone like me was really drawn to him,” said Alexander, a retired Coast Guard commander who helps run the Super Flags company. “He really loves his country.”

Demski’s company draped flags on the Washington Monument, Hoover Dam, in county fairs and veterans events everywhere.

After 15 years and one heart operation, he had become so associated with flags, he didn’t blink at a tattoo artist’s idea during a talk show.

“The guy saw my bypass scar and said, ‘You know, that would make a great natural flag pole,”’ Demski said. “So I got my first tattoo.”

Five years later, he is covered with them, highlighted by a flag outline of the United States on his back.

Some found him weird. President Bush’s people found him charming. Last winter, Demski and Alexander and their flag became the only sole-California entries in the inaugural parade.

None of which prepared him for the outpouring of emotion--and business--after Sept. 11.

“Somebody told me it was like everyone was just realizing what I’ve always known,” Demski said. “It was really something.”

It was also really expensive. Their https://superflag.com web site was overloaded, so it cost them to expand it. While they never made any money on the flag rentals, the increase in travel costs caused them to lose money.

The bills have mounted about the same time Demski’s ability to travel has stopped.

“He stuck his neck out as far as he could,” said Alexander.

“I’ve been quite depressed,” said Demski.

His last big trip was to New York, where he managed to reach Ground Zero and fly one of his flags from a crane.

He cradled his WTC identification card in his hand like a jewel. He sighed.

“This is so hard,” he said.

It’s gotten so bad, he’s even put the world’s largest flag up for sale, $100,000, because Demski is worried that it’s not being shown enough.

“These flags deserve more than I’ve been able to give them,” he said, shaking his head.

He misses the eyes of those holding the giant flag for the first time

He already missed one trademark moment, at Phoenix’s Bank One Ballpark during the recent Insight.Com Bowl.

Shortly before the game, Alexander had rounded up only 36 fireman for a unfurling job that required 150 people. He asked the fireman to go into the stands for help.

By the time the flag had been carried from the mobile home to the end zone, there were 200 people waiting to grab and flap.

“The best thing about all this is, it brings people together,” Demski said.

And ultimately leaves them alone. Demski spent Thanksgiving by himself, in bed. Same for Christmas.

“There’s nothing I can do right now,” he said, looking at bottles of unopened pills on his aging desk. “Everything is coming down at once.”

Old Glorious has already planned his wake and funeral. A couple of years ago, he even held a dress rehearsal with friends.

A hypnotist calmed him enough so he could lay for an hour in a plexiglass, mirrored casket in his garage while his friends ate corned beef sandwiches.

The casket is plexiglass and mirrored, of course, so everyone could see the tattoos on both sides of his torso.

The plan is for a cremation, with the casket to be brought out on the anniversary of his death and donated as a coffee table for the homeless.

His ashes? What do you think?

He has ordered them placed into the golden eagle at the top of his flag pole, above the ashes of a friend whose remains are already stashed inside the pole.

“A good place, don’t you think?” he said.

May he always fly high and free.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected].