This is Floyd Wynne with THE VIEW FROM HERE 6-17-04

The national anthem has become the opening part of our sports venue these days. Some sing it the normal way, others do it in their own manner. Some resent that, but it is the thought behind the anthem that counts.

Most Americans can sing the first verse of the National Anthem by heart, but few know either the story behind the anthem or the entire poem that became that famous anthem.

Composition of the National Anthem came about in the harbor of Baltimore, Maryland. The British had invaded the United States in what has been called the war of 1812. They had advanced to Washington D.C....and had burned the nation’s capitol. They had amassed a huge warship fleet in Baltimore harbor to subdue Fort McHenry, one of the strongest points of the U.S. defense.

Francis Scott Key was a lawyer by trade. In his idle times he was also a poet. One of his friends, a Dr. William Beanes, had been captured by the British, and accused of harboring American soldiers. Key asked President Madison to let him negotiate for Beanes release. He boarded a prisoner-exchange boat. He was held in temporary custody by the British and moved to the rear of the armada then assaulting Fort McHenry.

Atop the mast at the fort was a huge American flag with 15 red and white stripes and 15 stars. This was not just any American flag. A widow and her two daughters had made the flag the day before...laying it out on the floor of a brewery.

This was the flag Key saw flying bravely over Fort McHenry despite the terrible bombardment.

The bombardment lasted through the night, and at the dawn, Key, standing in the bow of a British warship spotted the flag still flying. He took an envelope from his pocket and began to compose a poem.

“Oh, say can you see by the dawns early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s lasts gleaming”. We all know and can sing the rest. But do you know the entire poem?

“On the shore, dimly seen through the mist of the deep, where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes. What is that which the breeze o’er the towering steep, as it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses. Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam. In full glory reflected now shines on the stream.”

There was more: “And where is that band who so vauntingly swore that the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion. A home and a country should leave us no more. Their blood has washed out their footsteps pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave....and the Star Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave...o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Key’s brother-in-law set the poem to the music of an old English drinking song, and an actor sang it in a Baltimore theater. It became an immediate hit.

But it didn’t become our National Anthem until it was adopted in March, 1931.

Think of this the next time you sing or hear sung the Star Spangled Banner.

This is Floyd Wynne and that’s THE VIEW FROM HERE.