Once again, the Friends of the Ferguson Home cordially invite you to celebrate Flag Week (June 9-15) with a Flag Day Ceremony on Saturday, June 15. We will celebrate and honor the Stars and Stripes with a flag raising ceremony led by the Adjutant of the American Legion Post 125 in Watonga and two students that attended the American Legion (Auxiliary) Boys (Woodrow Richardson) or Girls State (Jaidon Turney). This will include a pledge of Allegiance to the United States and the Oklahoma flag lead by Boys State attendee Parker Roberts.
The National Anthem, written by Francis Scott Key during the British Bombing of Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor in 1814, will be sung by Janine Espy. The President of the United States has again issued a proclamation of Flag Week and Flag Day (officially June 14). Following the anthem one of the students who attended Boys State, Dayson Cash, will give a short talk.
The ceremony will conclude with the singing of America the Beautiful. This hymn is contemporary with T.B. and Elva Ferguson as they arrived in Watonga in 1892 and while serving as Territorial Governor. According to an article in the National Park Service archives https://www.nps.gov/pe ople/katharine-leebates.htm, “The opening lines of what became the song “America the Beautiful” first struck Katharine Lee Bates atop Pikes Peak in the Rocky Mountains. During the summer of 1893, Bates took a leave of absence from Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she taught English literature.
She embarked on a journey across the United States to lecture at the Colorado Summer School of Science, Philosophy, and Languages in Colorado Springs. Originally written as a poem, many of the lines in Bates’ ode to the American landscape refer to geographical features she encountered during her travels.” (We can appreciate those amber waves of grain.)
“On July 4, 1895, Bates published the poem, “America,” in The Congregationalist. By 1904, the poem had become widely popular and was set to different musical arrangements. Its most common pairing was Samuel A. Ward’s “Materna,” the tune that we are most familiar with today. In 1910, the words and music were published together as “America the Beautiful.” Bates published a final version of the song in the Boston Evening Transcript in 1913.”
Following the singing of this hymn, we will enjoy some patriotic colored refreshments. June 14 marks the beginning of a 21-day period of increased patriotism that runs through July 4.