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Patriotism has made a dramatic return since terrorists attacked America on Sept. 11. American flags are harder to come by than Tickle-Me Elmo was a few Christmases ago. People are flying the stars and stripes from homes, cars and boats. Standing for the national anthem is back in style, too. So is removing your hat and placing your hand over your heart while it's played.
The question is, what song is truly our national anthem? The "Star-Spangled Banner" became our official national anthem on March 3, 1931, when President Herbert Hoover signed a bill proclaiming it so. But it has been "America the Beautiful" -- long known as the "unofficial" national anthem -- to which people have turned to express the red, white and blue sentiments of their hearts during these trying times.
The words to "America the Beautiful" were first published in 1895. The author, Katharine Lee Bates, was a 34-year-old professor of English at Wellesley College. The pince-nez-wearing, plump Bates was slow of foot, but not of thought. Her wit was legendary and her energy boundless. It may come as a surprise to you to learn that our very own Niagara Falls played a significant role in shaping "America the Beautiful."
In June of 1893, Bates departed from Boston, Mass. on a rail journey that would take her westward across the United States and immortalize her place in history. The next morning, the locomotive pulled into Niagara Falls. Bates kept a diary and had a curious habit of condensing the events of her day into a single line. In Lynn Sheer's book, "America the Beautiful -- The Stirring True Story Behind our Nation's Favorite Song" (Public Affairs Publishing), she notes that Bates preserved the memory of her brief encounter with the mighty cataracts with this entry: "The glory and the music of Niagara Falls."
A poem was beginning to form in Katharine Lee Bates' head -- one that would become "America the Beautiful." As a precursor to the fabled ode, Bates scratched down a poem expressly about the majesty of Niagara Falls.
Passion of plunging waters,
Columnar mist and glistening rainbow play;
A splendid thrill of glory and of peril
Sheer said of Bates' visit to Niagara, "(Niagara Falls) became a cultural icon, a symbol of the can-do optimism of a nation poised to enter its second full century. That spirit moved Katharine Lee Bates as well, and it helped shape the poem that was developing in her mind."
Bates' train trek took her to many of America's top cities -- Chicago, Kansas City and Colorado Springs among them. Her stay in Colorado included a three-week summer session teaching at Colorado College. At the end of those three weeks, Katharine Lee Bates and fate collided at 14,110 feet above sea level, at the top of Pike's Peak.
Bates had joined an excursion of fellow professors in ascending to the top of the famous Rockies summit. Once there, two members of her party fainted, thus Bates' view from Pike's Peak was short-lived. It lasted long enough, however, to cement in her mind the final piece of the jig-saw puzzle that would become "America the Beautiful."
She later wrote, "It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind -- 'O beautiful for halcyon skies, for amber waves of grain.'"
The poem was first published on July 4, 1895, in the Congregationalist, a weekly church publication in Boston. The poem spread like wildfire and was embraced by Americans far beyond the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
It was another local connection that helped turn the poem into an anthem. Bates received word that many people were setting her words to music. Honored, she reworked the poem to make it more musical. The revised version was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript on Nov. 19, 1904. Clergyman Charles A. Barbour of Rochester, N.Y. saw the poem in the Transcript and felt that it should be married to a hymn. Barbour enlisted the help of his wife, a trained musician, and set the words to a song by Sam Ward entitled "Materna." The hymn followed the precise cadence of the lines of the poem and instantly an anthem was born.
Many musicians feel that "America the Beautiful" is much better suited for the average voice than is the more intricate "Star-Spangled Banner" -- count composer Marvin Hamlisch among them.
"It's simple and sweet," Hamlisch told Sheer, "It's that climb up, that jump to America! That gives you a feeling of reaching for something big. It's very relaxed up to that point, and then it just bursts forward."
Former San Francisco Opera soprano and local resident Maria Fortuna offers a dissenting opinion. When contacted by the Reporter she said that, while she agrees that "America the Beautiful" is easier to sing unaccompanied, there is something about the "Star-Spangled Banner" that, for her, places it in a class by itself.
"It's stirring, noble and grand, as our country is grand," said Fortuna. "When the firemen raised the flag at Ground Zero, while the anthem played, it was as if they were saying, 'Do what you will to us, but our flag is going to fly.' I get goose pimples whenever I hear the "Star-Spangled Banner" -- no other song has that power."
Many feel that Bates reached across time to console a nation in need with the stirring third verse of the final revised version of the poem, published in 1911.
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
The debate as to which song best represents itself as being worthy of the title of America's national anthem will probably rage on indefinitely. Let's give the final word to Ms. Fortuna. "They each represent emotions unique to the American experience. Why can't we have both?"
Indeed.