The Signal from Santa Clarita, California • 21

Sunday, June 14, 1987 Newhall Signal Saugus Enterprise 21 Preserving Famous Flags Daylight Savings Time Means Vision For Some By (iaylc Young York designing computer software." Other than a spate of letters to museums, private collectors and other conservators when she started out, her only advertising has been by word of mouth. Only a handful of people do freelance flag restoration. Her workshop in a one-time school building is spartan, with a few racks to hold flags, tables on which to spread them out, a shallow basin to wash them and her specially adapted long-armed sewing machine. Using a sewing machine is "probably the most questionable aspect" of her work from a historian's point of view, she said. A purist would want the stitching done by hand, which she said she is willing to do at extra cost.

Thousands of Civil War-era flags exist and museums would like to do more restorations but have difficulty finding money. So getting contracts is a waiting game for Cyr. "You solicit people and then have to sit and wait for five years for something to happen," she said. the flags and steaming the wrinkles out of the material and paint. Flags with the state seal painted in the center on both sides are the toughest to restore, she said.

Many times, she unrolls a flag and finds a pile of paint chips are all that remain of the seal. Then she sits down with a pair of tweezers, leaning on an elbow, to figure out where each piece goes. "It's like working a jigsaw puzzle without a picture to work with," she said. Cyr has a degree in design and architectural history from the University of Minnesota and was designing kitchens when she decided to take over her father's business. Cyr, whose husband Leighton is a computer software engineer for Control Data works alone but is not a loner.

"There are days I don't utter a word until he (Leighton) comes home," she said. "But I enjoy the freedom to come and go, set my own schedule and do my own work." She laughs at the incongruity of fields she and her husband have chosen. "He marvels at what I can do with an old rag," she said. "I'm a 1980s Betsy Ross with needle and thread sewing flags and he's New Brighton, Minn. Civil War battle flags that survived shell and ball at Antietam, Vicksburg and Gettysburg are taking a greater beating from age and neglect.

Nancy Cyr works full-time restoring flags that have become faded and tattered by careless display or by being rolled up in musty closets and packed away in trunks for decades. When she's done fixing them, the historic flags should last another 100 years. "Essentially, I haven't done anything to the flags that can't be reversed." Cyr said. "I'm not destroying the flag. One hundred years from now if they find a better way of doing it, they can redo it." Cyr, 37, has been the owner and sole employee of Welter Studio since 1981.

She learned the craft at the side of her father, Thomas Welter, who spent about 25 years at it and still provides advice on occasion. Cyr restores 20 to 30 flags a year, working about five or six hours a day. It takes roughly 30 hours to complete one flag, for which she generally charges $1,200 to $1,500 depending upon the difficulty of the work. She works on two or three flags at a time, "letting one sit and then coming back to it the next day." "It does get tiring," she said. Cyr's restoration work is painstaking and tedious at times carefully removing the old threads that hold the gold fringe to failing and that they can not see as well in dark places as other people.

"Automobile accidents are common." Felix said. "Entering dark tunnels, not seeing something coming out of the corner of your eye. Without knowing, it can be dangerous." Often a person with the disease has perfect central vision even though their peripheral and night vision is failing. Eventually, the tunnel through which they can still see closes in until they become legally or completely blind. There are no diagnostic tests to confirm retinitis pigmentosa but it becomes easier to detect over time, according to the foundation report.

The disease progresses in predictable ways and always affects both eyes, Felix said. "We know it's an injury or something else if only one eye is involved," she said There are also no known tests to diagnose people who may be carriers of retinitis pigmentosa. Usually the disease is recessive, meaning both mother and father must pass on a gene that causes the disease to their child before it is inherited. "We believe different genes cause retinitis pigmentosa in different families," Felix said. He said researchers hope soon to discover the genes that cause the disease, just as other researchers have pinpointed genes that cause manic depressive disorders and a form of muscular dystrophy.

Once the gene is found, researchers can possibly determine by what mechanism the retina deteriorates and find a way to stop the process. For now, there is no treatment or cure for the disease. "We try very hard to find new ways to cope with it, since there is no cure yet," Felix said. Dozens of people with retinitis pigmentosa testified on behalf of legislation to extend daylight-saving time, which was signed into law by President Reagan last July. Said one victim at a Congressional hearing: "People with good vision look forward to the beauty of a sunset; but to people with retinitis pigmentosa, a sunset can be a nightmare." United Press International For rminy, the long daylight hours of summer are a delightful treat spent at backyard barbecues and after-work Softball games.

Kor people with retinitis pigmentosa, those extra hours are the difference between being able to see normally and being blind. One of the earliest symptoms of the inherited disease is night blindness, the inability to see in dim light or at night. "That hour or two of light means they can see, they can go out lo dinner, they can be independent," said Jeanette Kelix, director of science at the Retinitis Pigmentosa Foundation in Baltimore. "Daylight saving time is very significant." An estimated 100,000 Americans suffer from retinitis pigmentosa, a slowly progressing deterioration of the retinas in the eyes. Eventually, they become legally or completely blind.

Another 200,000 people are believed to suffer from related retina disorders that may, or may not, cause blindness, Felix said. Like many inherited diseases, retinitis pigmentosa is a mystery to researchers who do not know how to cure or treat it, according to a report from the foundation. The retina, located in the back of the eye, is like delicate film in a camera, with a layer of cells that imprints images and sends them to the brain. This layer of cells slowly degenerates in people who have the disease in a process that usually takes decades. First the ability to see at night is lost and then peripheral vision.

"It takes a long, long time," Felix said. "It is most commonly diagnosed in people in their teens and early 20s. They usually keep their vision through their 30s and 40s and even longer." Felix said often family and friends of a person with retinitis pigmentosa are the first to detect the problem. "They say, 'I can't believe you can't see that, it's right there'." she said. People who have the disease and initially are not aware of it do not realize their peripheral vision is Today is Flag Day United Press International McGee Finishes A.F.

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