A Poem for President's Day

From my local community newspaper.

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The following poem was composed by Nellie Catherine Stabbert in time to be published in the February 12, 1960 edition of the Sullivan County Democrat, my community newspaper. Nellie, a prize-winning Sullivan County poet and the wife of the newspaper’s publisher, wrote it for her weekly column, While the Kettle Boils. Republished in this weekend’s edition, it led me to recall something my fifth grade teacher, Sister Magdalena, said to her class, “America is blessed by always having the president it deserves in troubled times.”

Stabbert wrote her poem a few weeks after John F. Kennedy was sworn into office with a promise to steer our country toward an energetic future. If Stabbert revised the poem today, she may have trouble rectifying her vision of our nation just as much as Sister Magdalena might have trouble making her case for the country’s godly exceptionalism. I reprint the poem for this President Day because it harkens back to times when we were led by presidents the nation could be proud of and there was faith that they would almost always steer us toward the right side of history.

Freedom’s Call

   Now Washington can rest in peace
   His fight for freedom won,
   And Lincoln sleep upon the hill,
   The shame of slavery done; While Roosevelt 
takes up the fight
   Those noble men have begun.
   Washington, rest well. The tyrant bold,
   Who stalks the earth today
   Will feel the might of free men's steel
   And for his horrors pay.
   While we for peace o'er all the world
   A strong foundation lay.
   And Lincoln, sleep. We'll fight again
   To set those nation's free Now held in bondage
by the foe.
   And once again we'll see
   Men lift their heads and walk again.
   Thus we'll write History!

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