Middletown's Own Betsy Ross Knits National Emblem

Roger Raymond, 52, doesn’t remember much about the sweater his mother Helene, 84, hand-knit for him when he was about 5. But his father Andy, 84, can recall it clear as day.

“Roger used to bowl, so when he was young, she made him a sweater with a white bowling pin on the back and a black ball on the front,” Andy says. “For our other son [Roger], she made a bicycle one: yellow, with a bike on the back. She loves bright colors.”

Andy is well-known around Middletown as founder of The Middlesex Bicycle Club in 1973, the Andy Raymond Firecracker Criterium’s 19-year run, and for driving a ladder truck for for 28 years.

The Criterium was an exciting bicycle race run through Middletown’s downtown streets, last held in July 1993.

Helene, now mostly bed-ridden with depression, learned to knit from her aunt as a young woman growing up in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada. She moved to Middletown with her husband shortly after their marriage in 1954.

These days, Andy looks forward to the hour every day Helene will get out of bed to watch her favorite soap opera, “General Hospital.” He sits beside her, enjoying this bit of companionship.

In January, Andy approached Mayor Dan Drew, hoping to find a home for a lovely hand-stitched American Flag, 3½ feet by 5 feet, secretly and lovingly knit by Helene while Andy worked nights at the Main Street Fire Department.

“I’d work 12 hours,” he says. By then, the boys were in their late 20s and living on their own.

Helene completed her project — 13 alternating rows of knit red and white, and the blue canton in the hoist portion of the flag, in the late 1980s. Its 50 stars are finely crocheted in white.

Drew accepted the flag on behalf of the city and offered it to the Middletown Arts Commission for possible inclusion in the city arts collection.

“I believe it is important for us to embrace this, celebrate it, and enjoy this opportunity to show just how relative, personal and accessible art can be,” wrote MCA Secretary Jenny Hawkins Lecce. The commission voted to accept the folk art donation in February and will hang the flag in Council Chambers alongside a printed, framed document with its history.  

“She did it a little bit at a time,” Andy recalls. He would ask, “‘what are you doing?’ and she reply, simply, ‘knitting a sweater.’”

Since the late 1980s, Helene's Old Glory was kept safely in storage. “It had been in the attic all wrapped up real well, we never framed it but I had the flag all folded up,” Andy says.

Besides raising the two boys, Helene and Andy took in dozens of foster children.

“I always used to say we had 40 little brothers and sisters,” Roger says.
“They’d be with us anywhere from three months to a year or more until they were adopted.”

Helene’s son remembers quite a different mother from his youth. “She was so very active when she was younger. We’d be 13, 14, 15, and she’d say, ‘we’re going off to church. Don’t leave the house; watch the kids,’” Roger says.

“Up until three years ago, she could name every one of them. We must have had 42 to 44. Her love of the kids was amazing. One would leave after a year, two or three years, and she’d open her doors to another one.”

That’s why to the Raymond family, Helene’s handmade Stars and Stripes is as much a labor of love as it is a reminder of her generous, selfless spirit.

And so, recently, Andy stopped by Middletown Plate Glass to inquire about a frame.

“After all these years, I figured someday I’d do something with it. One day I brought to the owner, intending to hang it either at church or the American Legion Hall,” he said.

But when he asked about the cost, Andy says, the owner told him, “‘I remember you from the fire department.”

That’s back when George F. Redford ran the precursor to Middletown Plate Glass, which offered paper hanging and house decorating, pictures and picture frames, at 410 Main St., across the street from Middletown Fire.

“‘When something went wrong,’ Andy says the owner told him, ‘you’d be the first to call me. Don’t worry the flag will be framed. Don’t worry.’”

Needless to say, Andy was surprised — and pleased.

He’d like to see the plaque with the flag’s history include one line he’s sure Helene would appreciate: “It’s by Helene Raymond, not Betsy Ross.”

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