Candlelight Concert of Remembrance Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of D-Day November 3, 2019 Program notes and texts With gratitude The cost of the orchestra and professional singers participating in this concert has been underwritten by a generous individual, for the benefit of The Choir School of Newport County. This enables today’s admissions donations to assist the Annual Fund of the School, donations which are currently matchable dollar for dollar, up to $6,250. This matching gift is particularly intended to encourage new and repeat donations to the Choir School as we continue to build our base of support. Donations to the Choir School should be made payable to The Choir School of Newport County, memo Annual Fund Match. The Choir School is a financially independent 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization; donations are fully tax-deductible. Friends of Music at St. John’s, the co-sponsor of this event along with the Choir School, invites your donations in the envelopes provided, to present further concerts to the community at prices affordable for most. See page 30 of the blue Program Book for more information about Friends of Music activities. Donations to assist future concerts should be made payable to St. John’s Church, memo Friends of Music. Donations to Friends of Music at St. John’s, less the suggested value of $15 for adults and $10 for seniors/students for today’s program, are also tax-deductible. Orchestral materials for Fauré's Requiem for the permanent library of St. John’s Church have been purchased through the Bruce & Theodora Shaw Memorial Fund for Choral Music at St. John’s. Orchestra materials for Wilberg’s Let peace then still the strife have been rented by arrangement with Oxford University Press. The Naval War College & St. John’s Church Rear Admiral Stephen Bleeker Luce (1827-1917) served on the Vestry, (the governing board) of St. John’s practically from the very beginning. St. John’s was founded in 1875, and Luce is recorded in the parish register as a godfather at a baptism that took place in the first church building, now the Guild Hall, in 1883. The church was then known as “The Free Chapel of Saint John the Evangelist”—“free” because, unlike Trinity Church, which charged “pew rents” to their members, anyone could come and sit anywhere in the chapel, thus broadcasting that the chapel was intended for rich and poor alike, without any distinction whatsoever. The fact that the founding lay couple of St. John’s, Peter & Harriet Quire, were African-Americans, is a testament to its racial and socioeconomic integration from its very first worship service. According to a notice found in the Narthex (entryway) of the church, on October 6, 1884, the Secretary of the Navy, William E. Chandler, founded the Naval War College by a General Order that said simply, “A college is hereby established for an advanced course of professional study for naval officers to be known as the Naval War College.” Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce became the first President of what is now the oldest institution of its kind in the world. Luce’s concepts of the nature and needs of the naval profession shaped the War College from its inception. He appreciated the interrelationship of naval power, technology, and international politics, and the necessity for senior officers to understand such complex issues. Admiral Luce organized the War College as “a place of original research on all questions relating to war and the statesmanship connected with war, or the prevention of war.” Stephen Luce was born 25 March 1827 in New York City. Entering the naval service 19 October 1841 as a midshipman, he served with the Atlantic coast blockaders during the Civil War, and commanded the monitor Nantucket at the siege of Charleston, S.C. In 1862, while serving as head of the Department of Seamanship at the Naval Academy, he prepared one of the first seamanship textbooks used by the Academy. After the Civil War, Luce organized the Navy’s apprentice training program to prepare seamen and petty officers for fleet duty. From 1878 to 1881 Luce was inspector of training ships and, as commodore, he commanded the U.S. Training Squadron from 1881 to 1884. In addition to first President of the Naval War College, he was also instrumental in starting the Naval Institute and its Proceedings. He again served at sea before retiring 25 March 1889. He returned to the War College in 1901 and died 28 July 1917. Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) graduated from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1859 and served the usual course at sea. His father was a noted professor at West Point and his uncle was an Episcopal priest and professor at the General Theological Seminary in New York City. While still a Navy captain, Mahan was appointed the second President of the United States War College and began writing books and articles extolling the value of seapower as a key to national greatness. Of all the men who were to influence the War College in its early years, no other was to have such a profound impact. Mahan built a curriculum on the foundation laid by Luce. His lectures on naval history became its central feature, describing the geopolitical factors upon which maritime power was based, the role of a fleet of ships in expanding that power, and the relationship between seapower in all its forms and national greatness. Going all the way back to the time of Alexander the Great, he argued that those nations that had a powerful maritime force had been the most enduring. The greatest historic requisite for national power was sea power, which had made a small nation like England so mighty. By 1890 his ideas were well known, particularly after publishing a series of lectures under the title of The Influence of Seapower Upon History, 1660-1783. While at the War College, Captain Mahan served on the Vestry of St. John’s. St. John’s was growing rapidly but was not financially well off, serving as it did mainly the working class people who lived in the Point. Mahan is credited with introducing Sarah Titus Zabriskie, a summer resident, to the rector, Fr. Edward L. Buckey, who must have been overjoyed to receive a brief handwritten note in March 1893 stating simply, “I find that I am able to do as I hoped and I shall be very happy to build a new church for St. John’s parish in memory of my dear mother.” Thus the cornerstone of The Zabriskie Memorial Church of Saint John the Evangelist was laid in 1893 and the landmark church on the Narragansett Bay was consecrated in November, 1894. The Connection between St. John’s and the War College has continued into the 21st century. Countless administrators, faculty members, students, military personnel and their families, and civilian employees of the War College and Naval Station Newport have passed through these doors, and many have left a lasting mark on St. John’s. Following in Luce and Mahan’s footsteps, in the early 20th century, Rear Admiral Reginald Rowan Belknap (1871-1959) became active in the congregation. He had served in the Spanish–American War, Boxer Rebellion, Philippine–American War, and World War I. According to a popular online encyclopedia, he “gained distinction in 1909 for his relief work in Italy after the 1908 Messina earthquake and tsunami and for his work in command of the first offensive mining campaign in U.S. Navy history, the laying of the North Sea Mine Barrage in 1918. He was also a published author, an inventor, a member of many professional and social organizations, and an active member of the Episcopal Church, and he played a role in the selection of Amelia Earhart as the first female pilot to make a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean…From 17 March to 11 April 1919, Belknap was the third of three officers to serve as Acting President of the Naval War College while the college’s academic activities were shut down for World War I and its immediate aftermath.” In 1922, Belknap was elected Senior Warden of the Vestry of St. John’s, the same year that the Vestry, under the visionary leadership of Fr. Julian Hamlin, purchased Dennis House (our c. 1740 rectory with an 1875 addition by Charles F. McKim) and Grafton House, which sits between the rectory and our Guild Hall. Doubtless, Belknap played a major role in the expansion of our campus. Neither Father Hamlin nor Admiral Belknap could have foreseen that doing so guaranteed St. John’s survival into the present day, for when the Great Depression hit just seven years later, St. John’s was spared the expense of housing its clergy elsewhere in town, and from time to time, including the present day, Grafton House has been used as a rental property with three units, bringing much-needed revenue that has sustained our operations and ministry. Military personnel have enriched the common life at St. John’s both as residents and as parishioners, a tradition that will doubtless continue for as long as the parish and the college endure. CONCERT OF REMEMBRANCE Please see introductory notes on page 17 of the blue Program Book. Please also take a moment to be certain that any electronic ringing, beeping or vibrating thing you have brought with you is switched completely off. Thank you! The program lasts 75 minutes, without intermission. For the Fallen Douglas Guest (1916-1996) Douglas Guest was born in Yorkshire, studied at the Royal College of Music in London, and became Organ Scholar of King’s College, Cambridge from 1935 until 1939.