Today is the feast day of St. Phillip, celebrated with the Green Corn Dance at San Felipe Pueblo. San Felipe is a Keresan-speaking pueblo on the Rio Grande about half-way between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. it is one of the 19 pueblos of New Mexico.
Seven years ago today.
Today is the birthday
… of Chuck Bednarik, 85. The hall-of-famer played for the Eagles. Bednarik is the last NFL player who routinely played both offense (center) and defense (linebacker). Bednarik’s most famous play was a tackle of Frank Gifford that put Gifford out of action for a year-and-a-half (and ultimately shortened his career).
… of singer Sonny James, 81. James’s big hit was “Young Love” in 1956.
… of the amazingly graceful Judy Collins. She is 71 today.
… of Rita Coolidge, 65. Some say Coolidge is the reason for the 1970 dissolution of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, when she left Stills for Nash, but it was Kris Kristofferson she married in 1973 (and divorced in 1980).
… of Dann Florek of “Law and Order.” Florek is 59.
… of Tim McGraw. Tug McGraw’s boy is 43. Tim played the husband to Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side.
Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22, was born on May 1st in 1923. He died in 1999.
God Bless Kate Smith, born 103 years ago today.
Everything about Kate Smith was outsized, including Miss Smith herself. She recorded almost 3,000 songs -more than any other popular performer. She introduced more songs than any other performer – over a thousand, of which 600 or so made the hit parade.
She made more than 15,000 radio broadcasts and, over the years, received more than 25 million fan letters. At the height of her career, during World War II, she repeatedly was named one of the three or four most popular women in America. No single show-business figure even approached her as a seller of War Bonds during World War II. In one 18-hour stint on the CBS radio network, Miss Smith sold $107 million worth of War Bonds, which were issued by the United States Government to finance the war effort. Her total for a series of marathon broadcasts was over $600 million.
…But her identification with patriotism and patriotic themes dates from the night of Nov. 11, 1938, when, on her regular radio program, she introduced a new song written expressly for her by Irving Berlin – ”God Bless America.”
In a short time, the song supplanted ”The Star-Spangled Banner” as the nation’s most popular patriotic song. There were attempts – all unsuccessful – to adopt it formally as the national anthem.
For a time, Kate Smith had exclusive rights to perform ”God Bless America” in public. She relinquished that right when it became apparent the song had achieved a significance beyond that of just another new pop tune.
Mr. Berlin and Miss Smith waived all royalties from performances of ”God Bless America.” The royalties continue to be turned over to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America.
The New York Times (1986)
According to her very brief autobiography, Martha Jane Canary was born in Princeton, Missouri, on this date in 1852. That may or may not be any more truthful than the rest of that short work. A decent brief biography is found at the Adams Museum & House web site.
Calamity Jane went downtown and became a dance hall celebrity, frequenting E.A. Swearengen’s Gem Theater. She worked as a prostitute and dance hall girl in Deadwood and briefly managed a house of her own. Despite the fact that she was a coarse woman, adept at profanity, and drunk a great deal of the time, Calamity Jane was also known for her kindness.
What’s unbelievable is to have watched the wonderful portrayal of Jane by Robin Weigert on Deadwood, and then think that Calamity Jane was played by Doris Day in the movie Calamity Jane (1953) and Jane Alexander in the made-for-TV movie Calamity Jane (1984).
Mary Harris Jones was born on this date in 1830 (or, more likely, 1837). She is better known to us as Mother Jones. The magazine named after her has a nice biographical essay that begins:
The moniker “Mother” Jones was no mere rhetorical device. At the core of her beliefs was the idea that justice for working people depended on strong families, and strong families required decent working conditions. In 1903, after she was already nationally known from bitter mine wars in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, she organized her famous “march of the mill children” from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s summer home on Long Island. Every day, she and a few dozen children — boys and girls, some 12 and 14 years old, some crippled by the machinery of the textile mills — walked to a new town, and at night they staged rallies with music, skits, and speeches, drawing thousands of citizens. Federal laws against child labor would not come for decades, but for two months that summer, Mother Jones, with her street theater and speeches, made the issue front-page news.
The rock of Mother Jones’ faith was her conviction that working Americans acting together must free themselves from poverty and powerlessness. She believed in the need for citizens of a democracy to participate in public affairs.
NewMexiKen has known about Mother Jones since the eponymous magazine first came out in 1976. What amazes me is that I had no knowledge of her before that, despite majoring in American history, and even though “For a quarter of a century, she roamed America, the Johnny Appleseed of activists.”
Benjamin Latrobe, generally regarded as America’s first professional architect, was born on May 1st in 1764. We know him primarily for his work on the U.S. Capitol and the White House.
The Empire State Building opened officially 79 years ago today. It was the world’s tallest building for 41 years.