Pete Van de Putte Leading the Band, Waving the Flag

by Ron Aaron Eisenberg

Henry P. “Pete” Van de Putte is a San Antonian through and through.  Born at the Nix Hospital in 1950, he grew up here, and he never wanted to leave. Today he’s the boss at Dixie Flag, which for more than 50 years has been manufacturing flags and banners on San Antonio’s East Side.

But running a business was not one of Pete’s early goals, nor was making flags. For the longest time, he wanted to be an electrical engineer.  Indeed, until his senior year at Holmes High School he was sure that’s what he wanted to do.  Then he became drum major in the Holmes band, and discovered a passion for music and band directing he had never experienced before. It changed the course of his life in more ways than he could ever have anticipated.

In 1968, Van de Putte enrolled in St. Mary’s University. An incredibly focused student, he earned his degree as quickly as possible.

“I wanted to get out of school and become a band director,” he explains.

School was a challenge.  To be a band director, he says, you have to learn to play every instrument in the band, in addition to everything else you must learn about music and music education. He spent school holidays volunteering with local high school bands, learning all he could while helping the band directors do their jobs. His dedication paid off.

Still wet behind the ears, Van de Putte was named band director at Tafolla Middle School shortly after he graduated in 1972. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was strapped to a rocket ship. Within months, he was tapped by the school board to move up to Jefferson High School, which had the largest band in the area at the time, as band director.

He was smart enough to be scared.  But at age 23 he was young enough to believe he could do the job—and creative enough to make it work.

“I didn’t look much older than the kids,” he recalls.  “First day on the job a teacher tossed me out of the teachers’ lounge.  He thought I was a student.”

From then on Van de Putte wore a coat and tie to work every day. He was over-dressed compared to most of his colleagues. But it did the trick.  He could hang out in the teachers’ lounge without a problem.

Van de Putte loved Jefferson High. And he loved teaching even more.

In 1977, he married a ’73 Jefferson grad named Leticia Ortiz, a young pharmacist who is a state senator today. Both have music in their blood; Leticia’s parents Belle and Juan Ortiz are acclaimed San Antonio music educators, and the founders of internationally renowned mariachi Campañas de America.

But in 1980, Van de Putte had to put his own passion for music and teaching aside. His father Henry needed help with the family flag business. After a conversation with his dad, Pete left his teaching job at Jefferson to take over the business, Dixie Flag.

“My only business experience was managing candy sales for the band,” he laughs. But after all, it was the family business.

“Growing up, my roommate was a sewing machine,” Van de Putte says.  “Dad and Mom manufactured everything they sold at Dixie Flag themselves.  And that meant every room in our house played a role in making flags and such.

“My first goal at Dixie Flag was figuring out where we were and what we wanted to become.  The business was very small.  And we really didn’t have a lot of business,” he recalls.

But he embraced the job of managing Dixie the way he had tackled his job as a band director. That meant looking at the business with a critical eye. He made a lot of changes—and they worked.

Today, Dixie Flag has grown beyond anything his dad could have imagined.  Three of his six children work in the business.  And there’s probably room for a grandchild or two.

But teaching is still in Van de Putte’s blood.

“I miss teaching every day,” he says.  But while his days in the school system are long gone, teaching is still an important part of Van de Putte’s life. These days, he’s educating people about flags. A devotee of vexillology (the scholarly study of flags), he devours all kinds of books about flags and their colorful histories. Today, he’s a nationally recognized flag historian.

In 1988, Van de Putte began speaking to groups in San Antonio and beyond about the history of flags. School groups, civic clubs, neighborhood groups, even college classes. Telling the stories of flags has become his passion. And most of all, he says, he wants every American to know the history of our United States flag. And when he says it, he’s not just whistling Dixie.