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There is a movement in the United States to change our
national anthem. Some protest that the lyrics to the Star
Spangled Banner are stilted, the tune impossible to sing;
others complain the song is too militaristic. Most of
those hoping for change prefer the grand images evoked
with the singing of "America the Beautiful" and its
ambition of "brotherhood from sea to shining sea", to "the
rocket's red glare" of the "Star Spangled Banner".
WWII Purple Heart veteran Milton
Strayhorn, shown here with wife Louella and son
Phillip, was wounded while navigating an amphibious
vessel up the shore of Normandy Beach. |
"America the Beautiful" speaks in subsequent verses of
"pilgrim feet, whose stern impassioned stress, a
thoroughfare of freedom beat across the wilderness" and of
"heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self
their country loved, and mercy more than life."
It's a song impassioned by such virtues as freedom,
selfless service, achievement, nobleness, and divinity
while setting out as well the responsibility inherent in
maintaining those standards through law and self-control;
principles that perhaps America would do well to remember,
were all four verses sung regularly with full heart and
commitment.
In a collection of essays entitled "Our America" published
in the July 2002 edition of Reader's Digest, author
Barbara Kingsolver voiced her disapproval of the Star
Spangled Banner, writing, "I vote to retire the rocket's
red glare and the bloody bandage as obsolete symbols of
Old Glory. We need a new iconography of patriotism."
She described how her teenage daughter, understandably
sweet and "sensitive" of heart, laid her hand over a
photograph of 15,000 people in Tucson, Arizona, who,
dressed in red, white or blue T-shirts, had arranged
themselves to depict a gigantic American flag. Her
daughter surmised her hand covered roughly 5,000 people,
about the number originally thought to have died with the
collapse of the World Trade Center towers.
Kingsolver wrote, "...the one simple truth behind all the
noise... was that so many, beloved, fragile lives were
suddenly gone from us."
"That is my flag," she declared, "and that's what it
means: We're all just people, together."
Missed was the fact that the thousands of lives were not
"suddenly" lost; there was no calm before the storm that
brought the twin towers crumbling in a heap of twisted
metal and shattered masonry that day, not since the first
plane struck over an hour before the south tower
collapsed. Those lost did not die in a merciful instant
but fought terror through confused hope until hope was
gone.
They were the first American civilians since Pearl Harbor
to witness first hand the horror of war. These civilians,
without training, without warning, became sudden warriors
in a battlefield they called home.
It was another American civilian, Francis Scott Key, who
on September 13, 1814, from a ship outside Baltimore
Harbor, witnessed a 25-hour British attack on Fort McHenry
during the War of 1812. His heart-felt passion upon seeing
the great American flag still flying as the smoke cleared
with the morning's light inspired him to write our
national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner.
"Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so
proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose
broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air Gave
proof thro' the night that our flag was still there. Oh,
say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"
If only the victims of September 11 could have glimpsed
the future through the smoke and the haze of their tears,
to see the millions of flags that have flown in their
honor in reborn patriotism as Americans remind other
Americans their deaths were not in vain.
The American flag, and the anthem bearing witness to the
power of that symbol, have inspired the hearts of soldiers
and civilians through too many conflicts, as American men
and, increasingly, women, give their all to ensure
tomorrows of continued freedom.
Mr. Milton Strayhorn, a World War II Purple Heart veteran
from McKenzie, knows first-hand the sacrifice of men who
fought to keep the star spangled banner flying. Just four
days after D-Day, on June 10, 1944, Mr. Strayhorn was
navigating an amphibious vessel up the shores of Normandy
Beach when he was wounded by shrapnel from an enemy
bullet. Many weren't as lucky.
"I just believe in the Star Spangled Banner," he says. "We
called it Old Glory."
Years later, Wayne Walker was just 23 years old when he
was shipped to Vietnam. The demolitions specialist was
part of a combat engineering unit assigned to construct a
14-mile road through the hills between firebases. The
three-year operation was fraught with sniper fire, and
worse, perhaps, uncertainty in recognizing the enemy.
U.S. Army soldier Wayne Walker on
duty in Vietnam. |
"We had Viet Cong right in our midst," says Walker,
"Mostly what we ran into a lot of was North Vietnamese."
He explains the Viet Cong were South Vietnamese guerilla
fighters who fought on behalf of North Vietnam. "You
didn't know your enemy; all the South Vietnamese looked
alike and so did the North Vietnamese."
Mr. Wayne Walker today. |
Though the era in which he served was one of America's
most difficult, Walker has sought and found perspective.
"I don't think anyone wants to go into a war or conflict;
I know I didn't," he says, "But looking back, even though
times were difficult and we didn't know what might happen
from one minute to the next, it was worth it to me to do
my part."
Walker says the Star Spangled Banner honors those who gave
their lives not just for the country but for the flag
itself. "When people in different countries see the
American flag, they see hope," he declares.
Another McKenzian, Clay Kirk was seasoned during the
Invasion of Grenada in 1983 before participating in Desert
Storm seven years later. An M-60 gunner guarding air bases
during the 1983 offensive that cost 19 American lives, he
was a member of BDOC (base defense operations center) as a
radio telephone operator during Desert Storm. The unit was
responsible for setting up communications and coordinating
security with Saudi Arabian officials.
A veteran of wars sometimes discounted because of their
perceived pallor in the face of earlier, more horrifically
bloody wars (thanks to expert training and technological
efficiency) Kirk asserts a single life is as worthy of
honor as a multitude.
U.S. Air Force veteran Clay Kirk
served in the Invasion of Grenada and in Desert
Storm. |
"Regardless of how small or large a conflict is, you still
have casualties - wounded or killed," he says. "Just
because one life is lost compared to a million, how do you
weigh that? One life is just as important..."
The conflicts of which he speaks are the ones Barbara
Kingsolver seems to like best to deride, apparently
unfamiliar with the thankfulness with which the Kuwaiti
government and citizens greeted their American heroes.
"When I look at the flag, I see it illuminated by the
rocket's red glare," she says, complaining, "This is why
the warmongers so easily gain the upper hand in the
patriot game: Our nation was established with a fight for
independence, so our iconography grew out of war. Our
national anthem celebrates it; our language of patriotism
is inseparable from a battle cry. Our every military
campaign is still launched with phrases about men dying
for the freedoms we hold dear, even when this is
impossible to square with reality. In the Persian Gulf War
we rushed to the aid of Kuwait, a monarchy in which women
enjoyed approximately the same rights as a 19th century
American slave. The values we fought for and won there are
best understood, I think, by oil companies. Meanwhile, a
country of civilians was devastated, and remains
destroyed."
Her sad diatribe regarding the very souls who left
America's shores to ensure her welfare is in great
contrast to those civilians who Kirk recalls made life on
foreign, hostile soils easier to cope with.
"It's important that the American people acknowledge why
you're there and that they support you," he says,
recounting a dozen small ways fellow Americans made a big
difference to those in service overseas: tying ribbons,
sending American flags, adults and children writing
letters, sending little care packages with treats and
notes. "These things most people might think are 'dinky'
but they're not," he shares, "They make a big, big
difference."
It's a difference that carries over into the national
anthem. "Any country has got to have a symbol and
something that designates and separates it from others,"
says Kirk, "a sense of unity, something to focus on as a
group - as one. The American flag, the Star Spangled
Banner, that all brings us together I think. It's a symbol
we can look to whenever times get tough and the only times
people focus on things like that are when times are
tough."
That is why the Star Spangled Banner is still the nation's
favorite song, and why it must remain the nation's
favorite song; for it is when something is closest to
being lost that it is recognized as most precious. It is
that instant of desperate hope and sincere sacrifice that
the mass of common men and women must grasp through the
vicarious gaze of Francis Scott Key and a million soldiers
who have fought to keep our country free, the profundity
of the flag that is given voice through the song.
It is the Star Spangled Banner that lends credence to
America the Beautiful as a portrait of America, but it is
a symbol the nation can lose if Americans are not vigilant
in its protection.
"Fresh Air" commentator Geoffrey Nunberg stated in a
broadcast on Oct. 26, 2001 that "The Star-Spangled Banner"
is the most vulnerable of all of our nation's symbols,
citing a school board in Madison, Wisconsin that
instructed schools to use only an instrumental version of
the song.
"Granted, we all love our purple mountains, not to mention
the deserts, wetlands, headlands, redwood forests,
headlands, and all the other natural beauties that our
country affords us," he wrote, "But it's reductive to make
our landscape the focus of our national anthem. Any
country can do that. The Swiss sing about the Alps going
bright with splendor; the Czechs sing about water bubbling
across the meadows and pinewoods rustling amongst the
crags; the Brazilians sing about the sound of the sea and
the light of heaven. And the Syrian anthem begins with a
remarkable entomological trope: "Syria's plains are towers
in the heights . . . A land resplendent with brilliant
suns. . . . almost like a sky centipede.
"Anthems like those are appropriate for nations that have
no essential commitment to a particular form of
government: landscapes don't have any politics, after all.
But the American experiment was supposed to be different;
our patriotism is for a nation, not a land. No other
country tells its story as the history of a single regime.
That ought to be at the forefront of whatever anthem we
sing."
This November 11, on Veterans Day, for veterans and for
the common citizen, as the nation celebrates the
sacrifices made by soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen
in all our nation's wars, in the words of President Dwight
D. Eisenhower, "let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of
all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the
air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of
freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of
promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall
not have been in vain."
And as flags fly from public buildings and homes, may each
one look upon them as Francis Scott Key did, with a deep
yearning for the continuation of liberty and a love for
country and fellow man, never forgetting the blood of each
patriot who died to give us freedom and keep us free. |
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