Hi Everyone,
I'm going now to light a candle for each and everyone of you on this
list. Thank you so much for all that have written about your
experiences, thoughts and prayers.
We live a few doors down from a grade school. This morning I was late
getting the paper. When I reached the pavement, strains of "God Bless
America" filled our street. Tiny, out of tune voices and an out of tune
piano came at me like angels from up above. I couldn't move. The rain
came and I just stood there......
A friend of ours wrote this for the Chicago Sun-Times this past
Saturday. I'd like to pass it on.
Much Love,
jody and scott
God bless him for a great song
September 15, 2001
bylnie:BY ANDREW HERRMANN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
It's happened every day since Tuesday. Tears, yes. Rage,
too. But what I'm thinking
of is singing. ''God Bless America,'' specifically.
Eighty-three years after Irving Berlin wrote the piece as
a musical homage to his
adopted nation, the song continues to serve as a unifying
force for America. This
week it could be heard coming from churches across the
country. Pentagon workers
erupted spontaneously with its lyrics on Thursday as
President Bush visited the scene
of the terrorist atttack there. Mayor Daley asked that it
be sung across the city on
Friday. Members of Congress sang it as a sign of
bipartisanship.
"Great crises are marked by their memorable moments,''
Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld said a little more than 24 hours after Tuesday's
attack. "People will long
remember seeing and hearing the members of Congress
spontaneously breaking out
into 'God Bless America.' Who will ever forget the
display of national unity on the
steps of the Capitol Building? What a wonderful thing for
the world to see.''
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''God Bless America'' was introduced by singer Kate Smith
in 1938, but Berlin actually
had written the piece some 20 years earlier for a World
War I Army camp show
called "Yip! Yip! Yaphank.'' The song did not make the
cut.
Years later, after returning from a European business
trip convinced that Hitler's
ambitions would bring a world war, Berlin was determined
to write what he called "a
great peace song.'' Stuck, he suddenly remembered his
piece from years earlier.
He had to change some of the lyrics he had originally
penned in 1918. "One of the
original lines read, 'Make her victorious on land and
foam.' Well, I didn't want a war
song so I changed it to, 'From the mountains to the
prairies to the oceans white with
foam.' It altered the meter but I think it's better,''
Berlin once said.
Berlin also changed the original "to the right with a
light from above'' to "through the
night'' to remove any suggestion of politics. Smith sang
it on CBS radio during a
special veterans' show on Nov. 11, 1938.
The song had its critics: Church-state separatists
wondered, Why should God bless
America? A popular New York preacher made headlines by
attacking it as mawkish
and doggerel (though anti-Semitism probably was at work
there). The Klu Klux Klan
called for a boycott.
A Billboard magazine story from a few years ago noted
that it was sung unflatteringly
during the Vietnam War and that Archie Bunker in ''All in
the Family'' used the lyrics
to argue with his hippie son-in-law Michael. But the song
has endured as a kind of
unofficial American anthem--easier to sing than ''The
Star-Spangled Banner'' and
more rousing.
"My father came to this country from Russia as a
5-year-old boy and lived on the
Lower East Side,'' Berlin's oldest daughter, novelist
Mary Ellin Barrett, wrote. "He
became a [street singer] and then a singing waiter and
then a songwriter. He felt
incredible gratitude to this country for giving him the
chance to become who he
became.''
To sing the song, she said, is to make an incredibly
personal statement. "It isn't 'God
Bless America, land that we love.' It's 'God Bless
America, land that I love,' '' she
noted.
Berlin, who died at age 101 in 1989, said his song
''White Christmas'' made him rich,
"but 'God Bless America' is the closest to me
emotionally.'' In fact, he devoted
royalties of the song to charities under the God Bless
America Fund. An estimated $5
million from the song has been given to the Boy Scouts
and Girl Scouts.
Smith's version is rarely heard anymore, particularly by
people of my age and younger.
We learned the song in school, if we were lucky.
Otherwise, the words and the tune
we just somehow picked up living the American experience:
God bless America, land that I love.
Stand beside her and guide her
Through the night with the light from above
From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America, my home sweet home
Or at least we think we know it. One verse I was unaware
of includes the line, "While
the storm clouds gather far across the sea, let us swear
allegiance to a land that's
free.'' The storm clouds gathered here on our own soil
this week.
A CHEERS for Irving Berlin, a man whose lasting gift gave
us something sturdy to
hold on to.
