For most of my life, I’ve spent part of every summer in Avalon, a beach town on the Jersey shore. As a kid, I enjoyed days body surfing, only getting out of the water for a bologna and cheese sandwich and a nap on an old sheet, repurposed for the sand.
Avalon, a barrier island on the southern part of the coast, has always had a reputation as the playground of Philadelphia’s more affluent set. It is even richer now than when I spent my first summers “down the coast,” as we say. But its core identity remains the same: Avalon is casual. Nobody dresses up. And when you spend your day there, the only goal is not to do much of anything.
As a journalist, I’ve spent nearly two decades writing about the foods, traditions and quirks of the Jersey Shore, resulting in two books about the area — and a few articles for this newspaper.
When my father bought a vacation home in Avalon in 2020, he gave each of his children a college flag for Christmas — the flags, as is the tradition in Avalon and surrounding towns, were meant to be displayed from the house. I didn’t know why people did it, but most everyone did. So my University of Tampa flag hung from our second floor balcony next to flags representing my brothers’ schools.
I live in Avalon part time now. During sunrise runs, I like to take pictures of all the interesting flags I pass: flags with a sports theme. Ivy League flags. even custom flags, many stitched together from multiple college banners, representing an entire household’s alma maters.
I flagged the flag tradition as a local oddity that didn’t deserve explanation. That was, until the New York Times published an article revealing that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. of the United States Supreme Court had flown an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a symbol that was carried on Jan. 6, from his cottage in Long. Beach Island, NJ, last summer, according to interviews and photos. (The article appeared after the Times reported that the justice raised an upside-down American flag at his residence in Alexandria, Virginia, after the 2020 presidential election.)
I was working from the dining room table at Avalon when the news of the Appeal to Heaven flag broke.
I received two kinds of messages that day. The first kind was from distant friends: “What’s with you guys and all the flags?” And the second kind was from locals: “Why couldn’t he fly a college flag like everyone else?”
I couldn’t answer the second question, but decided to look into the first one for an article that recently appeared in the Style section.
I reached out to local historical societies, libraries, and a handful of college librarians and archivists to try to find out when and why the tradition began. I threw pictures onto history books I had unearthed at the Avalon Free Public Library. And I talked to people with homes in other beach communities, including Rehoboth and Dewey Beach, both in Delaware, who told me there was no such tradition in their towns.
Reporting became a kind of treasure hunt. When I heard from academics at four nearby universities, they all admitted they had no idea when the tradition began.
On a Sunday afternoon in June, photographer Michelle Gustafson and I spent over five hours cruising up and down Avalon and surrounding towns in search of the best, or weirdest, variety of flags. It was a beautiful day with blue skies so lots of people were out and willing to talk. If we found flags we wanted to know about, we would knock on the door.
There were school flags — one house had three custom flags representing 13 schools — but also sports flags, Pride flags and even a Grateful Dead flag. No one knew when the tradition began, but everyone was proud of their banners.
I got some answers from vexillologists, people who study flags. I was told that coastal towns traditionally used flags to signal between ships. But they still couldn’t pinpoint its origin in Avalon.
So I crashed the Avalon Historical Society’s monthly tea time, where I interviewed some longtime residents. Although no one had answers, guests shared memories. An 85-year-old resident recalled seeing college flags hanging from lifeguard boarding schools in 1948.
No one knew exactly when, but everyone felt sure why: Flying flags was a way to share pride — in a school. schools for children; a team; or, for a few, political beliefs.
I don’t write about Jersey Shore as much as I used to. I found it to be some of the fun I was there and once I shut down the “Jersey Shore Jen” mantle (my first Twitter handle), my head was no longer on a swivel, looking for stories when I should have been relaxing. But now that I live there part-time, it’s been a fun challenge to explain these hyperlocal traditions to a national audience.
My father, for one, was amused by the whole thing and told me to make sure our flags were out when the photographer visited. Michelle took a picture of me with them, even though my hair was frizzy from the humidity, the result of a long day reporting on what was, for everyone else, a perfect day at the beach.
Regardless of my reasons for throwing them, my dad loves his flags. They celebrate the achievements of his four children. And even though neither of us went to an Ivy League school, he still hangs them up high with pride.
