Lined up in the living room of the Albright family’s Kelso home Friday were 21 flags, each representing the U.S. flag’s evolution through America’s history.

There was a replica of the “Grand Union Flag,” which flew over George Washington’s camp at Cambridge, Mass., in 1776. There was the first official flag of the Continental Congress — a circle of 13 stars against a blue background — also known as the “Betsy Ross Flag.” There was the flag of the Confederacy. And there was the 1861 flag that added its 34th star with the acceptance of Kansas as a state. President Lincoln personally raised one just like it over Independence Hall when he visited Philadelphia for his inauguration.

The flags were presented by 25 Kelso High School students during the school’s Veteran’s Day assembly Tuesday. Kelso High junior Nathan Albright, 17, knew that the flags, sewn by his great-grandmother, were somewhere in the house and asked his grandmother, Toni Albright, late last week whether he could use them in the school’s ceremony. She spent the weekend ironing each of them.

On Tuesday, the students, one at a time, stepped into a spotlight with a flag while its description and history was read.

“It seemed like a pretty cool idea,” Nathan said Friday. “It hasn’t been done in a long time. It gives the kids an opportunity to see there was a reason we fought wars … We fought under different flags, and each flag is a different representation of who we were in different time periods.”

It was the first time the flags had been seen in public in at least than 15 years, Toni Albright said. Nathan said he hopes to make the presentation again next year, perhaps as part of his senior project.

Toni Albright said her mother got the idea for the flag ceremony from her and Kelso resident Priscilla McCracken, who had been putting on a similar ceremony with Cowlitz County kids in the 1970s.

Between 1982 and 1983, Nathan’s great-grandmother, Virginia Ellis, who was living in Idaho and working at a potato factory at the time, sewed all 21 flags, meticulously measuring and attaching each strip of fabric to ensure the flags’ authenticity.

Idaho Governor John Evans personally presented Ellis with the state’s Governor’s Award for Oustanding Volunteer Service in 1983 for her work with youth, including the flag ceremony.

Ellis, who died in 1990 at the age of 62, was a devotee of the American flag and hated to see it abused, Toni Albright said. She said her mother once spotted a flag laid out in a local shoe store’s window with three pairs of shoes laid atop it. “Stop!” Ellis shouted. She stepped from the car, walked into the store, properly folded the flag and presented it to the store’s owner.

On another occasion, Tracy Albright said, Ellis stopped at an Idaho car dealership and demand they replace the giant but tattered American flag that flew above the lot.

Toni Albright said she believes the World War II years, when the country banded together and everybody seemed to do their part, forged her mother’s patriotism. Ellis’ husband and his brothers served in the war, and she donned combat boots each day and set out for a military base where she worked as a civilian contractor.

“She believed that if you teach a child about patriotism when they’re young, they’ll carry it into adulthood with them,” Toni Albright said. Ellis, she said, wanted people “to recognize the meaning behind that flag — not just that it’s red, white and blue — but that people actually died protecting it.”