Rich Kruithoff is a financial services professional who meets the needs of diverse high-wealth clients as the head of Charitable Planning Services, LLC. An outdoors enthusiast who enjoys fishing and boating, Rich Kruithoff also has a passion for US history.
One of the most unique items featured at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC is the "Star-Spangled Banner.” The banner framed at the Smithsonian Institute is actually the larger of two flags commissioned by Major George Armistead, the commander of Fort McHenry in Baltimore. It was created by local flag maker Mary Pickersgill, who was paid $168.54 for the smaller storm flag and $404.90 for the larger garrison flag.
It was this larger flag, raised high above Fort McHenry as British ships rained fire on it during the War of 1812, that inspired Francis Scott Key to compose a patriotic poem. Decades later, after the Civil War, the poem was set to music as the national anthem and the famous flag became enshrined in history.
Today, Pickersgill’s torn and tattered Star-Spangled Banner, meticulously restored during a “Save America’s Treasures” initiative in the late 1990s, stands as a framed reminder of that momentous period in US history when the nascent nation’s future was at stake.
