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kota would look nice on the other side. McNeil agreed, and the state seal set against a field of dark blue was placed on the reverse side.
• A bill adopting the state flag was passed by the Legislature in 1909.
•  "If I had known as much about flags as I do now, I certainly would have left the reverse side plain," McNeil said in the Rapid City Daily Journal article. "A two-sided flag is very difficult to make. In addition to the added work, it is difficult to prevent one side from showing through onto the other."
• McNeil explained in the newspaper article that to make the state flag, she appliqued the golden sun and embroidered the sun's rays. She then took another piece of silk, painted details of the state seal on it and appliqued this to the reverse side of the flag. In addition to being difficult to make, a two-sided flag was expensive to produce. The silk material from which McNeil made the flag cost $12.50 per yard and the materials for one flag cost about $75 in 1963.
• McNeil left her state job when she married in 1921. Although she made the first state flag, she is better remembered for being a pioneer in radio broadcasting. She became known as "Mrs. Pierre" while owner and operator of KGFX radio in Pierre.
• Another version of how South Dakota's flag came into being states that May told Robinson that Deadwood pioneer Seth Bullock wanted a state flag. Robinson makes no mention of Bullock's involvement in the state flag in Doane Robinson's Encyclopedia of South Dakota. David A. Wolff of Spearfish, author of Seth Bullock: Black Hills Lawman, said that he could find no evidence in his research on Bullock to support the idea of Bullock being involved in the first state flag.

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