By Gary Topping–
As I have been writing on this blog recently, I spent the winter of 1959-60 studying at the U.S. Navy School of Music in Washington, D.C. I turned eighteen that winter, and with only a high school education, I was poorly prepared to appreciate the history and cultural wealth of that great city. But I did my best: I visited the National Archives and saw the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, I spent many hours in the Smithsonian Institution viewing the multitude of artifacts there, and of course I luxuriated in the proverbial cherry blossoms in the spring.
But there was one historic site that I did NOT enjoy visiting, and unfortunately I had to visit it many times. That was Arlington National Cemetery just across the Potomac River from Washington. Actually I had no problem with the cemetery itself, which is quite beautiful. The problem was the weather. Around Christmas, the U.S. Navy Band, the Navy’s most elite musical organization, got to take a couple of weeks’ leave. That meant that someone else had to play all the funerals at Arlington, which was one of their regular responsibilities. That someone was students at the Music School. Despite the fact that the school only sent small skeleton crews over to play those funerals, I seemed to get chosen every time.
Up to that time, I had spent virtually my entire life on the Oregon coast. Everyone there used to complain about the drizzly weather, but the weather actually was quite moderate—not hot in the summer nor cold in the winter. The weather in the nation’s capital, by contrast, was almost never pleasant. In the summer, it was hot and humid and the winters were dreadfully cold. I was prepared for neither. When we played those Arlington gigs, we piled on as many layers of socks, trousers and undershirts as we could pack in under our uniforms and thick peacoats. And we were still cold. Trumpet valves froze, trombone slides froze, and we could remain functional only by constantly blowing warm air through the horns and keeping the moving parts moving. It was truly miserable.
But there was one high spot: we always got to play the Navy Hymn. Fortunately, the Navy had wonderful arrangements of the two most essential pieces in our repertoire: “Anchors Aweigh” and the Navy Hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.” I have only recently learned that the Navy Hymn was composed by a couple of Englishmen in 1860-61, almost exactly a century before I was introduced to it. Unlike similar chorales, “Eternal Father” has a very complex and interesting harmonic structure, in which the chords seem to be crawling all over the page. I never got tired of playing or listening to it.
(You can hear a vocal version of it here, ably rendered by the Sea Chanters, the vocal component of the U.S. Navy Band.)
During my Navy years I was only vaguely aware of the lyrics, since we played an instrumental version rather than singing it (I suspect our vocal version would have verged on the sacrilegious). Looking at them now, in this age where toleration and diversity are watchwords, it seems to me that only the first verse would pass muster:
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep,
O hear us when we cry to thee,
For those in peril on the sea.
In 1960 most of us in the Navy were either Christians or Jews, neither of which presumably had any problem with God the Father. Even Muslims, also monotheists, I suppose could buy that if any of them had been around. We had no Hindus, and even the American Indians among us failed to register a protest from a polytheistic point of view. So far, so good.
But the second verse invokes Christ, who stilled the raging Sea of Galilee and walked on its water, and the third verse invokes the Holy Spirit, who brooded over the waters in the first chapter of Genesis. Now we’re in trouble.
Our instrumental rendition, of course, avoided all theological niceties: it was just a pretty melody with an interesting chord structure. While I was marching around on those icy asphalt streets in Arlington, I think I might not have balked even if someone told me it was a hymn of praise to the Devil himself if I could only have warmed my icy buns for a moment in the fires of Hell.
*Gary Topping is a writer and historian living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is the retired archivist for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City and has written many books and articles. Signature Books recently published his latest work titled D. Michael Quinn: Mormon Historian.
