AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

During the funeral service in the Capitol Building for George H.W. Bush last night, the Navy choir from Annapolis sang "America the Beautiful."  I think it's the best of our patriotic songs.  Here is the background on it.

Katharine Lee Bates, born in 1859,  was an educator, writer and poet.  A minister's daughter, she was born and raised in Massachusetts.  In 1893, on a sight seeing trip out west, she jotted down a poem she called "Pike's Peak"; the Colorado mountain on which she was standing.  The complete edited version of the poem wasn't published until 1913. 

Several people applied music to her words but the tune which stuck was the melody written by Samuel Ward, an Episcopal Church organist from New Jersey.  He called his original work "Materna"; it was meant for a religious hymn.  Mr. Ward died in 1903.  Ward and Bates never met.

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