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State song turns 105 March 14; state flag celebrates 97th birthday March 15

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It is all thanks to Dr. Harry P. Mera and the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) that New Mexico consistently ranks as having the United States’ best and most beautiful state flag.

Mera (1875-1951), a Santa Fe archaeologist, created a new design for the state flag to win a contest sponsored by DAR. The New Mexico Legislature adopted his creation as the official state flag and Gov. Arthur T. Hannett signed it into law March 15, 1925.

A medical doctor, Mera lived in Michigan, New York, Ohio, Colorado and Kansas before settling in Santa Fe in 1922, where he pursued an interest in archaeology.

In creating his simple but elegant design for New Mexico’s flag, Mera remembered a pot featuring the Zia sun symbol he had seen at Zia Pueblo, and also incorporated the scarlet and gold of the flag adopted by Spain in 1785.

“Four is the sacred number of Zia, and the figure (on the flag) is composed of a circle from which four points radiate,” according to the website of New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver (www.sos.state.nm.us/about-new-mexico/state-flag). “The sacred number is embodied in the Earth with its four main directions; in the year with its four seasons; in the day, with sunrise, noon, evening and night; in life, with its four divisions – childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. Everything is bound together in a circle of life, without beginning, without end. The Zia believe, too, that in this great brotherhood of all things, man has four sacred obligations:  he must develop a strong body, a clear mind, a pure spirit and a devotion to the welfare of his people.

“The red and yellow are the colors of Isabel of Castilla that the Spanish Conquistadors brought to the New World,” the website continues. “The symbol’s proportions are fixed by legislative act, with the four groups of rays set at right angles, the two inner rays one-fifth longer than the outer rays. The diameter of the circle in the center is one-third the width of the symbol.”

The salute to the flag is “I salute the flag of the state of New Mexico, the Zia symbol of perfect friendship among united cultures.” In Spanish, it is “Saludo la bandera del estado de Nuevo México, el símbolo zia de amistad perfecta, entre culturas unidas.”

The New Mexico flag was rated first in a 2001 survey of 72 U.S. and Canadian flags by the North American Vexillological Association.

State song

March 14, 1917, is the date the New Mexico Legislature adopted “O Fair New Mexico” as the state song. The song was written by Elizabeth Garrett (1885-1947), the daughter of one-time Doña Ana County Sheriff Pat Garrett, who shot and killed Billy the Kid July 14, 1881, in Fort Sumner.

Amadeo Lucero (1900-87) wrote “Asi Es Nuevo Mexico,” the New Mexico Spanish-language state song.

The Great Seal of the State of New Mexico, showing an American bald eagle and a smaller Mexican eagle, was adopted in 1913, the year after New Mexico became a state.

The state motto, which is incorporated into the seal, “Crescit eundo,” is Latin for "It grows as it goes."


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