Reclaiming the Centennial State's Centennial Song

Reclaiming the Centennial State’s Centennial Song: The Facts About “Where the Columbines Grow” By Robert G. Natelson IP-3-2015 September 2015 1 2 Reclaiming the Centennial State’s Centennial Song: The Facts About “Where the Columbines Grow” By Robert G. Natelson1 Executive Summary The year 2015 is the centennial of the polymath and leading Colorado citizen. Part Colorado General Assembly’s designation of III examines the music and the lyrics, both of Where the Columbines Grow as the first state which are far richer and more subtle than song. (The original sheet music appears at the those of most state anthems. In fact, much of end of this Issue Paper.) Despite the the criticism seems to be based on a failure to legislature’s direction that the song be played understand the lyrics. Part IV concludes that and sung “on all appropriate occasions,” it has the criticism and neglect of Columbines has been neglected and even maligned. been undeserved, that the song is worthy of a revival, and that units of Colorado state This Issue Paper tells the story of this unique government should comply with the and misunderstood state anthem. Part I is the legislative mandate that the song be played Introduction. Part II outlines the and sung “on all appropriate occasions.” extraordinary life of its author, A.J. Fynn, a I. Introduction The year 2015 is the centennial of the adoption of Where the Columbines Grow as the Fashionable modern attitudes toward first Colorado state song. Today Columbines is Columbines, as is so often true of fashionable little known and less sung. This is in striking modern attitudes, have been sour.2 In 2007 contrast to practice in some states. In the song was forced to make room for John Montana, for example, where I lived for 24 Denver’s Rocky Mountain High, to which the years before returning to Colorado, civic and state legislature granted equal status. political events often opened with the state song—if not sung by performers, then by Yet Columbines’ adoption in 1915 was the everyone together. result of an overwhelming legislative vote,3 3 and was an occasion for celebration and appropriate occasions.”7 While no one can acclaim.4 The Pueblo Chieftain (to cite only claim that the tune is great music or that the one example) wrote that “Every loyal lyrics are Shakespearean poetry, compared to Coloradoan should learn and sing [this] other state anthems Columbines is of very high beautiful poem.”5 When, in the face of efforts quality: Its lyrics are deep in a manner not to decertify Columbines, lawmakers have apparent on superficial reading and its music listened to it anew, each time they have is unexpectedly sophisticated and haunting. delivered thumping majorities to retain it.6 Moreover, its author was a Coloradan of whom our state can be proud. Before This Issue Paper concludes that Columbines’ analyzing the composition, let us examine the supporters have it right, and the critics are composer. wrong. The song is worthy of revival and, as the law requires, should be “used on all II. About A.J. Fynn A. Fynn’s Biography “He was the kindest man [we] ever worked for.” —assessment of Fynn by teachers at Denver’s Gilpin School8 Both the music and the words to Columbines state-wide service and literary were crafted by Dr. Arthur John Fynn. (That’s distinction in a great university . 9 “Fynn,” not “Flynn.”) A few years after the teachers at Gilpin School offered their Dr. Kimm might have added to this Horatio assessment, historian Silas Conrad Kimm, Alger-style summary that Fynn was a person who, like Fynn, was an alumnus of Fairfield of extraordinary versatility. Seminary in New York, wrote of Fynn that he had been Fynn was born into a farm family in Salisbury, Herkimer County, New York, probably on a small boy, born in a back woods November 21, 1857.10 His father was an Irish town, poor in soil and lacking in immigrant; his mother hailed from culture, with no academic schools, no Connecticut. His father died of epilepsy daily papers, no good roads and no during military service when “Art” was about contact with the outside world [who] five. force[d] himself upward from a common farmer chore boy to a place of Art was one of four children. To support the 4 family his widowed mother hired him out as a Boston area to begin what eventually became farm laborer. He successively worked on a large autograph collection. While in college about seventeen farms at a going rate of he acquired signatures from Henry approximately five dollars a month. He also Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf learned the cheese maker’s trade.11 Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.18 Art Fynn somehow managed to collect I have not been able to learn how Fynn spent enough money to pay for a good education. his time for the two years after receiving his After elementary school, he worked his way master’s degree, but in 1889 he landed a job as though Herkimer County’s Fairfield assistant principal19 at the high school in Seminary.12 Nowadays we would call Fairfield Central City, Colorado. In Central City, he Seminary a high school because it served boys taught ancient and modern history, English of that age, but it was much more academic literature, Latin, German, and oratory. Earnest than most modern high schools. It billed itself Morris, one of his Central City students, later as a “classical academy.” This meant that, like recorded that, “There was hardly a poetic gem most of the better schools of the time, it that he could not recite from memory and focused on the Latin language and on the explain in a masterful manner.”20 Greek and Roman classics. This training stood Fynn in good stead, for in later years he Fynn was filled with a restless energy and taught Latin and employed classical learning curiosity that drew him into activities far to enrich his lectures and writings.13 In Fynn’s beyond his job responsibilities. For example, class of six boys, all become professionals: in Central City he offered free public lectures three lawyers and three educators.14 Fairfield on literary and historical subjects.21 no longer exists, but an offshoot survives as Hobart College.15 In 1891 the Alamosa school board selected him over 25 other applicants as school Fynn did not graduate until 1878, when he principal.22 After Fynn helped found a was 20 years old. This probably was for want separate high school, he assumed the title of funds rather than lack of diligence. The “superintendent.”23 In Alamosa, he continued scrap book he compiled around that time to lecture publicly, offering a presentation on reveals a young man determined to obtain a Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.24 He also delivered fine education.16 Its pages are filled with a paper to the State Teachers Association newspaper clippings containing philosophical convention on how educators could use essays, news items, history, speeches, poems, biography to inculcate character: and other indicia of scholarship. The paper of A.J. Tynn [sic] of Alamosa After graduation, Fynn taught school in was the first paper of to-day’s session Herkimer County—at Fairfield for a year and and was of great interest. It was on in Salisbury for three. Then, still unmarried, “Biography As a Factor in Education.” he enrolled at Tufts College (now Tufts Mr. Tynn declared there was nothing University) in Medford, Massachusetts. He more interesting and absorbing than a played college football and earned his B.A. study of life. “We are all, perhaps, (1884) and M.A. (1887) in education.17 He unconsciously, worshippers of heroes. took advantage of Tufts’ location in the Books depicting hairbreadth escapes are 5 always full of interest for children. principal was a woman and the school was a Emerson says: ‘There is no history only large one where “there were frequent cases of biography.’” Mr. Fynn said that if we corporal punishment.”34 The superintendent are to have statesmen, children must was convinced, therefore, that the principal read of statesmen.25 should be a man. Apparently no one thought to argue that if the assistant principal took the While in Alamosa, he began to spend top job, she could hire the muscle necessary summers traveling to Indian archeological to inflict corporal punishment. sites. On one of these trips, an 1896 journey to Pueblo ruins in the Four Corners area, he This job was followed by three similar had the experience that may have inspired the positions in Denver public schools.35 It was future state song.26 after leaving his appointment at Gilpin School that that some of the teachers spoke of him as Although he held neither a Ph.D. nor a “the kindest man [we] ever worked for.”36 university position, perhaps because of his erudition by 1895 people were referring to In Denver, as in Central City and Alamosa, him as “Professor Fynn.”27 In 1898, he Fynn pursued numerous outside activities. decided to cure the lack of a Ph.D. by For 23 years he served as a part-time enrolling in the graduate program of the instructor for the University of Denver—what College of Liberal Arts at the University of we now call an “adjunct professor.” In one Colorado, focusing on pedagogy.28 His DU year book he was listed as “Professor of brother, Hiram Addison Fynn, was already on English in the Summer School” and the CU faculty as a dentistry professor.29 “Professor of Ethnology and Archaeology in However, the dental college was in Denver, the Extension College.”37 and Arthur attended classes in Boulder.30 He also taught there as an “assistant in In addition, Fynn lectured in less formal pedagogy.”31 settings on an array of topics: “Samuel Johnson and His Times,”38 “Ancient Fynn earned his Ph.D.

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