Joe Dabney at Large
"God Bless America" Receives Full Treatment From Retired Men's Group   

By Joe Dabney

I love attending the Retired Men's Group meetings at Bartow County's Zena Drive Senior Citizens' Center in Cartersville. One of their best traditions, carried on by President Dave Craddick and colleagues, is that after the 10 a.m. opening prayer by Sal Amico, the pledging allegiance to the flag, they launch into a rousing rendition of Irving Berlin's God Bless America.

Not only that, the members, led by song leader, Don Massey, sing the entire lyrics, beginning at the top. You've probably never heard of the opening verse but it goes like this:

When the storm clouds gather, far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.
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 ocean white with foam,
God Bless America, my home, sweet home.

Except for the Retired Men's Group tradition, I never would have learned that the opening lyrics tell us that the song is a prayer of thankfulness for our nation and all the blessings we enjoy. I heard it the first time in the 1940s when Kate Smith's magnificent voice boomed God Bless America into our living room on our Sears Silvertone radio powered by A and B batteries. It became her theme song from then on, I believe. And what a great run that was.
Hearing the entire wording of God bless America led me to thinking how many of us are deprived of great poetic lyrics when our song leaders by-pass secondary stanzas. We Baptists, for instance, get kidded for always skipping verse three in a four-stanza hymn. (But the Episcopalians, I understand, sing every verse, God bless 'em.)

Everyone loves America The Beautiful, written by Katharine Lee Bates with melody by Samuel Ward, that starts off, "O Beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain..."

But do you know the third verse, the one that goes like this?:

Oh beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
'Til all success by nobleness
And every gain divine!

Most of us are familiar with the opening lines of My Country 'Tis of Thee, by Samuel F. Smith that goes like this:

My country 'tis of Thee,
Sweet land of liberty
Of Thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountain side
Let freedom ring.

But have you ever sung any of the other seven verses? Such as number seven?:

Beneath Heaven's gracious will
The stars of progress still
Our course do sway;
In unity sublime
To broader heights we climb,
Triumphant over time,
God speeds our way.

How lyrical, and with such depth of feeling.

I had heard a story that on June 22, 1877, when Coroner J.R. Johnson conducted the last Gilmer County hanging on Corbin Hill behind the county court house in Ellijay, that the condemned man ­ Anthony (Tone) Goble ­ as a final wish, asked the assembled crowd to sing An Unclouded Day.

I have been unable to confirm this story but the song Unclouded Day is so poignant and would have been so appropriate at such a hanging, that I thought it would be worthwhile to end this column with the lyrics of this haunting hymn. The first verse and refrain go this way"

O tell me of home far beyond the skies,
O they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise,
O they tell me of an unclouded day.

O the land of cloudless day,
O the land of an unclouded sky,
O they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise,
O they tell me of an unclouded day.

Now just in case you're already familiar with An Unclouded Day, here is the second verse that will not be as familiar:

O they tell me that He smiles on his children there,
And His smile drives their sorrows all away;
And they tell me that no tears ever come again
In that lovely land of unclouded day.

Oh, by the way, you can hear the Retired Men's Group singing God Bless America if you'll tune into Cartersville's station WBHF at 1450 on the AM dial at various times of the day.

Joe Dabney is an author and speaker whose most recent book, "Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bred & Scuppernong Wine," a "cultural cookbook" in the Foxfire tradition, is in its 12th printing. He can be reached at joedabney@aol.com.