Jon Burkhardt and Steve Ferrel have been flying kites since the 1980s. They are longtime members of the Maryland Kite Society.
“A great activity with wonderful people; you’re out playing with the wind,” Burkhardt said during last month’s annual Blossom Kite Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Burkhardt is the treasurer of the Maryland Kite Society, which is the second-oldest active kite club in the country, second only to a club in Hawai’i. The Maryland organization was founded by Valerie and Mel Govig in Baltimore in 1969.
Two years prior, the first D.C. kite festival took place, created by aviation pioneer Paul Garber as well as the Govigs and the Smithsonian Institution. Garber is also known for being the first curator of the National Air & Space Museum.
“The wonderful people involved, being outdoors, and being able to do a lot of neat stuff with color,” Burkhardt said, is what inspired him to join the society in 1980.
Both Ferrel, originally from Allentown, Pa., and Burkhardt are involved in the American Kitefliers Association, a major participant in the Blossom Kite Festival.
It was actually illegal to fly a kite in D.C. between 1892 and 1970. Burkhardt said that people were arrested and fined in the years leading up to the abolition of the law, and it took an act of Congress to overturn the law.
Kites have a long history in science and military use. The story of their origin is unknown, but they were used in China and Japan around 2,000 years ago for military, scientific and entertainment purposes. In militaries throughout the world, they were often used as target practice to simulate shooting down airplanes. Kites are also used for meteorology today.
Each year during Presidents’ Day weekend, the Maryland Kite Society hosts a kitemaker’s retreat. Later this year, some Maryland Kite Society members will be flying kites on the beaches of Italy. And later this month, the Maryland International Kite Expo will be held in Ocean City, Md.
Many kite flyers from around the country travel to the festival in D.C. as well as festivals in other parts of the world. The Levesque family traveled from Doylestown, Pa., to fly their kites in the nation’s capital, but they’ve also gone as far as Denmark to fly their kites.
In D.C., Chris Levesque and his son Matthew flew a large octopus kite in a spectacle of tentacles. Dogs barked at the tentacles, other kite flyers stopped and stared and photographers took photos.
Attached to the octopus was a homemade kite that Chris made himself. The family, who has been flying kites for roughly a decade, said they were inspired by kite makers such as Mikio Toki and Peter Lynn to start making their own kites. Matthew called Lynn the “Santa of kites.”
Toki, a Japanese kite maker who passed away in November of 2025, was honored at the D.C. festival with a collection of white kites flown on the demonstration and competition field. Lynn was one of the fliers in this display.
Joao Da Silva, from Seattle, wanted to visit his friends who live in D.C. during the kite festival so that he could fly their large frog kite.
“I think we wanted to make a statement,” Da Silva said. “The frog was immediately what we wanted.”
Da Silva said his kite was inspired by the Portland Frog Brigade, a collection of protestors who dress in inflatable frog costumes to protests around the country. It’s fitting, since this year’s kite festival coincided with the No Kings parade in D.C.
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