Songs of a Sorrowing Nation
“You can tell the kind of a man he was from the hymns he loved. Our organist and our choir know. He felt those hymns inwardly.” These words were spoken by the 78-year-old rector, the Rev. George W. Anthony, at the morning service of worship conducted by him on Sunday, April 15, 1945, in St. James Episcopal Church at Hyde Park, N. Y., within a few minutes after President Franklin D. Roosevelt was laid to rest in the “rose garden” on his own estate.
Probably never before did the people of the United States hear so many of the hymns of the Christian Church played so frequently as during those days of sorrowing for the President of the nation who died suddenly on April 12. They began to be heard soon after the first announcement was made to a stunned people, and continued until Sunday, the 15th, when the beloved leader was buried amid the scenes he loved. Commercial programs were cancelled, and the radio devoted itself to news concerning the passing of the president and events thereto related. “The Star-Spangled Banner” and familiar hymns, mostly the favorites of President Roosevelt, were frequently heard.
Hymns were intimately associated with each movement of the body as it made its journey from Warm Springs, Georgia, where the president died, until it reached its final resting-place. When on Friday the folks of the community assembled to witness the departure of the train which would carry him to Washington Chief Petty Officer Graham Jackson, a Negro, who was a favorite with Mr. Roosevelt, stepped from the circle of mourners. He had with him his accordion which Mr. Roosevelt loved to hear him play. Now, as a last tribute, he “played the haunting strains of ‘Going Home’ from the New World Symphony. Then he played, ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’”
Great crowds gathered to witness the passing of the train which bore the body toward Washington. They were reverent and tearful. A rather striking incident occurred at Charlotte, N. C., where the train moved slowly through the station without stopping. Street intersections were thronged for blocks with mourners. The silence was broken as the train passed by a troop of assembled Boy Scouts who started to sing, “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and “the crowd took up the hymn in a ringing chorus.”
When the caisson which bore the body from the railroad station at Washington halted “before the main white-columned portico the casket was borne into the White House by uniformed members of the armed services.” The Navy Band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Then, outside on the lawn, “a service band played an old tune, ‘Abide with Me.’”
The U. S. Marine Band which was present when the train arrived at Washington followed the national anthem with “The Old Rugged Cross” as the casket was placed on the black-draped military caisson.
Because the hymns used at the funeral service in the White House on the afternoon of Saturday, April 14, were familiar, The Right Rev. Angus Dun, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, who was in charge, with other clergymen assisting, mentioned the fact that these hymns were favorites of Mr. Roosevelt, and invited the assembled company to join in the singing. The Navy Hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” and “Faith of Our Fathers” were sung at this time.
Next day the body of President Roosevelt was back in Hyde Park. The great chieftain had reached journey’s end. “Between the manor house and the new library is the rose garden where the grave has been dug,” said The New York Times. And there at ten o’clock on Sunday morning was brought the body of the man who loved to visit this garden when the flowers, especially the roses, were sending forth their beauty and their fragrance. Probably it was because of this fact that many radio programs and church services placed in their musical programs the familiar sacred song:
“I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear,
Falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses.”
At the head of the procession in Hyde Park, as the body was taken from the train to its resting-place, was the Army band from West Point, with “its members in uniforms composed of dark blue tunic, lighter blue trousers with white stripes. Their silver instruments gleamed.” First there were the sounds of muffled drums. Then the band took up Chopin’s “Funeral March.” Six hundred West Pointers “formed a solid phalanx facing the grave from the west. The brief rites were conducted by the Rev. George W. Anthony, the venerable rector. It was brief and simple. As the body was lowered into the grave he intoned the opening lines of the widely used hymn of John Ellerton:
“Now the laborer’s task is o’er;
Now the battle day is past;
Now upon the farther shore
Lands the voyager at last.
Father, in Thy gracious keeping
Leave we now Thy servant sleeping.”
“Hymns had been the life-long study and delight” of Ellerton (1826-93), an English Clergyman of the Episcopal Church.
A file of West Pointers fired three volleys. “As the last volley sounded, as if it were one shot, muffled drums beat again. At the head of the grave a bugler sounded taps.” Then, as Stevenson wrote, “Here he lies where he longed to be.”
The hour of morning worship in St. James’ Church was near, and so many of the people went to the little church for the 11 o’clock service. The building was crowded. But “the Roosevelt pew was empty. Here Franklin Roosevelt sat, boy and man, for almost sixty years.” An American flag marked the pew on this day. Congregation and choir sang, “How Firm a Foundation.” When he announced “O Master, Let Me Walk With Thee,” the clergyman stated, as he glanced toward the Roosevelt pew, that the hymns selected were loved by Mr. Roosevelt. “He is now at rest in the community which he loved,” said the speaker.
The next hymn sung is not widely known in this country outside the Episcopal Church, though it is found in The Church Hymnary, Scotland. Its author was Arthur Campbell Ainger (1841-1919), who after his graduation from Cambridge University spent most of his life in teaching at Eton. He was “one of the most distinguished of Eton masters, a man of clear head, controlling character, wide accomplishments,” and he also wrote several hymns. The hymn begins:
“God is working His purpose out
As year succeeds to year.”
The minister related the fact that Mr. Roosevelt loved growing things, especially; and called attention to the extraordinary coincidence that the church envelopes for that day carried a “Garden Prayer”: “Help us, O Lord, to grasp the meaning of happy, growing things, that we may weave it into the tissue of our faith in life eternal.... We thank Thee, O Lord, for gardens and their message.”
A soloist now sang, “O Rest in the Lord.”
Howard Graves moved to the corner beside the altar and bore a large American flag forward in the chancel. The ushers took their places beside him. The choir, the organ and the congregation merged in fervent chorus with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A prayer, and the service closed.
“He was a good friend. He was a good neighbor,” said a parishioner as she left the sanctuary with tear-dimmed eyes.
Hymns were sung by an all-high-school chorus at City Hall Park, New York City, on Saturday afternoon, following the one minute of silence, and these included “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” Fifty thousand people were present and many joined in the singing. A memorial service was held in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and seven thousand people were gathered an hour before the service began on Saturday afternoon at four o’clock. The hymns there sung were “Nearer, My God, to Thee”; “Rock of Ages,” and “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” Communities all over the nation also held services at the hour when the funeral was held in the White House and in thousands of churches, public squares and parks, after the moment of silence in which traffic was hushed, and men and women stood with bowed heads, some of the hymns already mentioned were sung. “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” was sometimes included. Many of these programs also included “America the Beautiful,” and, of course, our beloved national hymn, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”
Those who could not leave their homes were still enabled to listen to these services (and perhaps join in the singing of the hymns). “The networks,” said an editor, “gave an impressive picture of the tribute being paid to a departed leader from one end of the country to another. One joined the solemn throng in front of the City Hall in New York, or sat in a great cathedral in Boston. Swiftly from the Eastern seaboard to the Far West, the radio gave us glimpses of memorial services in Chicago, in Kansas City, in Dallas and in Seattle.”
An appreciative letter to an editor by a woman said of those days from the death to the burial of Mr. Roosevelt, “Along with our grief and tears we were given an uplift such as the broadcasting companies have never given us before for a period of time like that.”
CHAPTER VI
OCCASIONS TO REMEMBER
“Once I remember taking a service while the shells screamed over us into Ypres. And as the men were singing:
“‘Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing,’
one that fell short came hurtling, landing not two yards away—a dud.”—Dr. A. J. Gossip in “The British Weekly.”
“What was the greatest moment of all?” That was the question put to General Evangeline Booth of the Salvation Army when she was 81 (Christmas Day, 1946), by Dorothy Walworth, who narrated the interview in The Christian Herald.
Retired, yet in good health and still working hard, this magnetic speaker, whom I once heard as she thrilled a mighty audience with her fervent oratory, paused a moment. As daughter of the founder, and later his honored successor in its leadership, there had been many high moments. Then came her answer with conviction as she related that her finest experience came on a day which she spent in the Leper Colony in Poethenkuruz, in southern India, where a chorus of little leper girls had been trained to sing one of the hymns she wrote for the Army. They stood before her in their dainty white dresses. Faces and hands were badly scarred, “but their voices were clear and true. As they reached the words in the hymn:
“With all my heart, I’ll do my part,”
They put their tiny scarred hands over their hearts, and I was overcome,” said Miss Booth.
Princess Elizabeth (prospective Queen of England) was married to Prince Philip on November 20, 1947. This was the centennial of the death of Henry F. Lyte. The Princess, therefore, arranged for the rendering of his hymn:
“Praise, my soul, the King of heaven,
To His feet thy tribute bring,”
when the bridal party entered Westminster Abbey. “This same hymn,” said The Diapason, “was also sung at the wedding of King George and Queen Elizabeth.”