Arlington Settles on County Seal

Standard Adopted After Much Debate

Arlington County officials adopted a new county "great seal" this week, featuring the iconic columns of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Arlington House on a field of Arlington Blue with white dogwood blossoms floating across the bottom.

Well, it's not really new.

The seal has been around in one form or another for four decades. And that was the problem, officials said -- there were too many versions of the seal. Some left the flowers out. In some, the flowers were yellow. Some seals were black, others green. And some had a Fourth of July feel, with red interspersed among the columns.

"For all these years, our seal has lain there tattered and defiled," said Mary Curtius, a spokeswoman for the county. "People have ripped it asunder. It was a mess. A horrible mess."

And an emotional one.

So much so that when county graphic designers proposed to clean up the seal, insisting, for instance, that only Arlington Blue be used, or that the letters be enlarged and the roofline of the Arlington portico be better defined, they put their proposal on the county's Web site and accepted public comment for 60 days.

And comment people did. Eighty-one of them.

Some liked it: "More distinct and sharp in design."

Others wanted changes, such as removal of the veins from the dogwood leaves. The veins were eliminated.

And others left messages such as this: "I am glad to know that we don't have bigger problems."

The saga of the seal began in 1983, when officials conducted a contest for a design for a county flag.

Harvey Wilcox was eating lunch at the Pentagon when he took out a pencil, drew his idea on a napkin and sent it in. County officials liked it so much that they chose it not only as the winner of the flag contest -- to be flown on a background of a "pale cheery yellow" -- but as the official county seal.