Lockport adopts local Boy Scout’s city flag design

Lockport — Lockport residents will soon see a new flag flying in the downtown area, thanks to the efforts of a local Boy Scout.

Zach Dylkiewicz, who is a eighth grader at Homer Junior High, first came to the Lockport City Council in May with the idea of creating a new flag for the city, which he said would be more aesthetically pleasing and represent the city.

Lockport’s current flag is the city’s maroon seal on a white background, though it is not used in an official capacity often.

After presenting his idea to the city, Mayor Steven Streit invited Dylkiewicz to more thoroughly explore the idea through the creation of a flag committee, which Dylkiewicz spent his summer working on as part of his Eagle Scout project.

Joined by Streit and five other residents, including other students, Dylkiewicz created flag concepts with input from Marty Callahan, a member of the North American Vexillological Association (NAVA)—an organization dedicated to the study and design of flags—who helped design a city flag for Batavia in 2023.

“Marty was a great help,” said Streit, while praising Dylkiewicz’s dedication to the project and his maturity. “It was funny, when Marty first joined us on Zoom, I was surprised and said, ‘I didn’t know you were a kid,’ because of the way Zach was talking about everything in his emails,” he said.

Eventually, the committee landed on two similar designs that were presented to the city’s Committee of the Whole on Wednesday following the regular the council meeting.

Dylkiewicz explained the two prototypes were designed with NAVA’s “five key principles for flag design” in mind – simple design, meaningful symbolism, no lettering or seals, limited color use, and to be distinctive or related to other symbols.

Both versions of the proposed flag include a maroon background, which is consistent through other branding in the city, including the city seal, and serves as the school color at Lockport Township High School, with a horizontal, wavy stripe of blue representing the canal, and limestone-colored concentric circles or ripples which “resemble the rings surrounding the Lincoln statue in Lincoln Landing and symbolically convey Lockport’s historical importance and influence on the surrounding region.”

The only difference between the two designs was the placement of the circles, with one option including them on the lower right corner of the flag and the other keeping them more centered.

After some discussion, the council members voted to adopt the version with the centered ripples.

Following Committee of the Whole approval, the flag will officially be adopted with a resolution at the Oct. 16 City Council meeting and the flags will be flying downtown.

“It’s nice that Lockport is now part of the flag reform movement,” said Dylkiewicz, “I’m glad to be part of it with the committee.”

The Flag Reform Movement is a reference to initiatives going on throughout the United States to redesign unappealing or potentially offensive state and city flags and is what Dylkiewicz said inspired his idea.

“I got interested in flags when I saw stories about Mississippi changing its state flag,” he said. “I started reading about it and I fell down a whole rabbit hole about flag designs, and one day got bored and tried to design my own, which lead me to bring it to the city council. I’m proud that Lockport finally has a real flag.”