Rainbow Flag Creator Gilbert Baker Dies At 65

Gilbert Baker, who took his sewing skills and created the Rainbow Flag, which quickly became the symbol of the gay rights movement, giving an icon to the LGBTQ community, died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 65 years old.

Baker's longtime friend Charley Beal describes him as "dynamic, larger than life. We have lost a giant. Walk around the block and you will see a rainbow flag. His legacy is everywhere."

Baker, who was living in San Francisco in 1978, was asked by Harvey Milk - then the first openly gay elected official in the country - to create a flag for a large march he was planning.

Baker had grown up in Kansas where his grandmother owned a women's clothing store. He developed an appreciation for fabrics at a young age, he would say, adding that it wasn't until he moved to San Francisco after getting out of the Army in 1972 that he got his first sewing machine.

He quickly developed a reputation in the city's gay rights movement for his sewing ability, making banners. His drag queen persona was Busty Ross.

"Because I loved to sew, my role in the movement became to make banners," Baker told the website Refinery29 a few years ago. "That’s really how I ended up making the first flag — I was the guy who could sew it."

That original flag had eight colors - each standing for something:

Pink was for hot sex; red for life; orange for healing, yellow for sunlight; green for nature; turquoise for art; indigo for harmony; and violet for spirit.

Over the next two years, two of the colors were dropped: hot pink because it was too expensive to include in mass production and indigo when organizers of the Gay Freedom Day Parade wanted to split the flag in half to fly across the street from each other and wanted equal stripes on both sides.

The flag was adopted by the movement, something that was seared into the world's memory in 1994 when he created a mile-long flag to mark the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot, often used to mark the birth of the modern gay rights movement.

The flag was 30 feet across and 5,280 feet long and carried by 5,000 people. It was unfurled in front of the United Nations before a crowd of more than one million.

In 1993, then-Mayor David Dinkins had approved a permit that would have allowed the flag to be marched in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. By the time of the 1994 march, a new mayor - Rudolph Giuliani - was in office, and he switched the permit to First Avenue, away from the Cathedral.

After the flag was unfurled at the United Nations, Baker cut up 200 pieces that were then reassembled in front of the cathedral as part of a 10,000-person ACT-UP march.

Those pieces were then given to delegations from around the world, spreading it as a symbol for the LGBTQ movement.

The Guinness Book of World Records certified the 1994 flag at the time as the world's largest flag.

In 2003, Baker created an even larger flag for the Key West Pride Parade. It was 1.25 miles long and stretched across Key West from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. For that flag, he restored the missing two colors - hot pink and indigo.

It, too, was certified as the world's longest flag by Guinness.

In 2015, when the United State Supreme Court upheld gay marriage, the White House was lit in rainbow colors to mark the occasion. And, demonstrating how the symbol had spread worldwide landmarks from Niagara Falls to the Empire State Building to the Eiffel Tower to the Sydney Opera House were also lit in rainbow lights.

That same year, the flag was acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art, which displayed it in the lobby last year after the presidential election.

Baker's friend, Charley Beal, tells Patch that Baker "was an artist and an activist and the two were very much intertwined. He woke up every morning and made art - whether it was with paint brushes or his sewing machine.

"He very much saw himself as a street activist, as someone who didn't have a lot of patience for what he considered country club gays who took money from the community, got themselves nice offices and didn't accomplish a whole lot."

Baker did not rest on his rainbow laurels.

In 1979, then-San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein noticed Baker's flamboyant window displays at Paramount Flag Company where he worked. She hired him to design a flag for her upcoming inaugural.

That was followed by commissions for flags for the state visit to San Francisco of the president of France and the premier of China, among others, as well as the 1985 Super Bowl and the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

Gilbert had been working to help organize events for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in 2019.

"With Gilbert's passing, there are candlelight vigils being held all over the United States and at our four LGBT Centers in New York City and Long Island we will be hanging the iconic flag at half mass," said the CEO of the LGBT Network, David Kilmnick. "Not only did Gilbert help the LGBT movement, he also served as veteran of the US Army.

"It is a great loss to the LGBT community and all Americans and he will be greatly missed, but leaves us with a symbol of unity and pride that will carry on forever."

He is survived by his mother, Patricia Baker, of Conroe, and sister, Ardonna Baker Cook, of Cypress, Texas.

"Our family is extremely grateful for all of the condolences and support we have received on behalf of Gilbert's passing," the two said in a statement. "He will be dearly missed by his family, friends, the art world, as well as the entire LGBTQ community.

"He led a bold and inspiring life by bringing The Rainbow Flag to the world and teaching others about the beauty in diversity."

Beal says that planning for a memorial service - which, at the request of Baker's family - will be handled by a small group of Baker's friends, will begin on Monday.

Photo of Baker: Spencer Platt/Getty News Images/Getty Images

Rainbow flag image courtesy Gilbert Baker

Photo of Baker with President Obama courtesy Jay Blotcher