Henrietta Hay's Column

One of my favorite people will become an American citizen this week in a special ceremony in Colorado Springs. Exactly one hundred years ago, on July 22, Katharine Lee Bates stood on the summit of Pike's Peak and gazed out on "purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain." When she returned to her hotel room she wrote the first version of "America the Beautiful." A big part of the celebration of that Centennial will be the swearing in of new citizens from all over Colorado in the presence of a crowd including Ambassadors from around the world.

Katharine Lee Bates was a young English professor at Wellesley College back in 1894, when she went to the top of the peak in a mule drawn wagon on a special outing sponsored by Colorado College. "At the Gate of Heaven summit, hallowed by the worship of perished races," she wrote later, "(we) gazed in wordless rapture over the far expanse of mountain ranges and sea-like sweep of plain...It was then that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind."

According to her biographer, Melinda Ponder, "That poem is about her ideas of community and brotherhood. By brotherhood she meant including women. She was committed to women's minds and was part of the first generation of female scholars."

I would like to think that her vision of community and brotherhood in America still exists, but I fear it has been tarnished. The city at the foot of Pikes Peak, where the celebration is taking place is torn by religious, political and sexual controversy. It is widely considered to be the most conservative city in Colorado, headquarters for the political and religious far right. It is the home of Amendment One and Amendment Two to the Colorado State Constitution, which are causing severe rips in the political and social fabric. Ms. Bates might not recognize it.

It is appropriate, however, that her Centennial should be celebrated by the admission of new American citizens. Webster says that a citizen is "a member of a state or nation, esp. one with a republican form of government, who owes allegiance to it by birth or naturalization and is entitled to full civil rights." Most of us take our citizenship for granted. We were born with it and it is our right, but a lot of us don't think we have to do anything to earn it. Less than half of us vote and few of us are willing to work at it, but all of us gripe. The newly naturalized citizens see it a bit differently. They take it very seriously as they declare their loyalty to their new land. But they cannot and should not erase their cultural origin, and that ethnic diversity is a part of America.

My friend has been in this country for 31 years, and has for all those years been a citizen in everything but name. He cares for his family, pays his taxes, obeys our laws, probably takes his hat off when the flag goes by. But he declined to take this step until now because of his reluctance to give up being an Ecuadorian. His love for his native land has never interfered with his loyalty to the United States and he finally made the decision that citizenship will not take away his "Ecuadorianism" In fact, his son commented that, "Hey, Dad, you don't even have to give up your accent."

The last ceremony of this sort that I attended was here in Mesa County when several children, whom I have since watched grow up, became citizens. They are Americans, but they were born in Korea. They listen to TV and play with Barbie dolls and plastic machine guns, and play soccer and football. But they are still Korean by birth and that can never change. I don't remember his exact words, but then Judge Larry Marquez told them, "There will be people who will tell you that because your skin is dark or you have an accent that you are not as good a citizen as they are. But you are. Don't let anyone tell you different. Don't you forget."

A hundred years ago Katharine Lee Bates wrote "And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea." Today it's our job to keep her shining vision alive and intact for another hundred years.