Unlike his fellow Americans, David Martucci doesn’t have to wait for June 14 to roll around before celebrating Flag Day.

To Martucci, who lives in the little Knox County town of Washington, every day is flag day.

Martucci is a vexillologist, a name that derives from the Latin word for a Roman military flag and refers to those people around the world who devote themselves to the scholarly study of flags through the ages and the emotional impact they have on the people they represent.

As the president of the 520-member North American Vexillological Association, Martucci doesn’t just research flag histories and write and lecture about them, which he does a lot. He designs and makes flags too for families and organizations that want proud banners to call their own. He has designed hundreds of flags, one of which was carried by the large 1989 expedition that scaled Mount Everest.

Martucci was the fact-checker for the U.S. Postal Service’s U.S. stamps program, and shared his expertise about the history of a rare pre-Revolutionary War American flag on a History Channel special to be aired July 5. He also collects flags, of course – he owns about 300 of them so far – and works as a professional appraiser of historic U.S. flags.

While Martucci enjoys nothing more than wrapping himself in flags each day, if only figuratively, he said his unusual passion is not the product of a nationalistic zeal. It began instead when he was a high school kid in New Jersey who was trying desperately to pass an English course that focused on King Arthur.

“I needed an extra-credit project,” said Martucci, a former town selectman who works as a free-lance computer consultant and Web designer for small businesses. “As I was going through the encyclopedia, I came across a picture of the flag of Wales, which was said to have been designed by King Arthur’s father. I did a report on it, and passed the class. I was 16, and it just snowballed after that as I discovered that by studying the flags of other countries I could learn what the people of a nation believed in.”

Vexillologists, Martucci said, prefer to think of flags as “the shorthand of history.” The symbols and colors of a flag, to those who know how to interpret them, relate the abridged story of a nation’s struggles, hopes and dreams.

“The whole history of the French nation, for instance, is embodied in the three stripes of blue, white and red,” he said. “Even the simplest flag tells a story.”

Here in America, of course, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center have made us more conscious than ever of our nation’s flag as a symbol of unity and resolve, a banner that identifies us as one people in all our diversity.

“There have been a few periods when mass displays of the flag were important to the spirit of Americans,” he said. “We saw it in the Civil War, the Bicentennial, and World War II. Now, there’s no doubt that September 11 has been added to that list. There’ll be more flags than ever flying on Friday.”

When Martucci first started researching and writing about Maine’s flags some 15 years ago, he found himself steeped in an interesting field of study that had been largely ignored by local historians. That surprised him, he said, considering that Maine has one of the largest collections of historic militia flags in the country, some of which date to before statehood in 1820. Although many are housed at the Maine State Museum, one of them – an 1814 flag that flew over Fort Hill in Biddeford – has a place of honor at the Smithsonian Museum.

Martucci said Maine also has the “dubious distinction” among states of having a flag that uses none of the symbols it once adopted by law. Maine’s official first flag, adopted in 1901 and replaced in 1909, was quite different from the one flown today, which has no official color scheme for its coat of arms. Martucci prefers the state’s little-known original design – a simple rendering of a pine tree on a buff background, with a blue star in its upper left corner. He believes it is far more expressive than the flag used now, and tried twice in the 1990s to convince the Legislature to restore the early version as Maine’s official flag.

The lawmakers, who clearly did not share Martucci’s vexillological leanings, quickly shrugged off his proposal both times.

Since Sept. 11, Martucci’s U.S. flag appraisal business has quadrupled.

“There’s definitely a lot more interest in flags today,” he said. “Although flags have been collectible for a while, people are suddenly digging through Grandpa’s closet and dragging out old flags for appraisal. There are all kinds of unusual flags out there.”

He is currently assessing a Minnesota collector’s Civil War flag, on which the 35 stars spell out the word “Free,” and has pegged the value of certain Confederate flags from Maine collections as high as $150,000.

Whether he’s researching the seemingly endless variations of the American flag, the oldest truly national banner, or studying the newest arrival that flies over the fledgling country of East Timor, Martucci said, he’ll never tire of what the shorthand of flags reveals to him about the world.

“Every day the passion gets deeper,” said Martucci. “On Friday, I’ll put out 15 to 20 different American flags for the occasion – if I can find enough poles, that is.”

Tom Weber’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.