Folger McKinsey -- The Bentztown Bard

(From The Sun, May 18, 1997)

By Gilbert Sandler

WHEN THEY SPEAK of The Sun's giants, rarely recalled is the Bentztown Bard, Folger McKinsey. Five days a week for 42 years, he wrote his column, ``Good Morning,'' from 1906 without a break until 1948, when he was incapacitated by illness. Popular demand induced The Sun to run reprints of his column for still another year. He died in 1950 at the age of 83.

Originally from Elkton, McKinsey began his career as editor of the Shore Gazette in Ocean Beach, New Jersey, where he became friendly with Walt Whitman. Later he worked as a poet and reporter on the Frederick Daily News, which is where he gained his moniker. Near the Barbara Frietchie House in Frederick was a neighborhood called Bentztown, named for a Bentz family that had owned a farm at the site.

In 1906, The Sun's rival paper, the Baltimore Herald, published a derisive notice: ``The Sun is showing that its corpuscles are bright red, its eyes clear. It has hired a staff poet.'' The Sun picked up the ball: ``Hired a poet! Perish the expression. Poeta nascitur [A poet is born], not hired.'' You may as well talk of hiring a zephyr.''

The poet was Folger McKinsey, who proceeded to write his ``Good Morning'' in his own style and without apology. He mixed excerpts from the Bible and inspirational prose limning ``love,'' ``forbearance'' and ``sympathy.'' Always at the top was a quatrain by Carlotta Perry: It was only a glad good morning/ As she passed along the way/ But it spread the morning's glory/ Over the livelong day.

During World War II, when newspaper space was scarce, an editor decided to remove those lines. He was overwhelmed with letters of protest. The lines were restored, and remained.

McKinsey made love to Baltimore every morning in poetry and prose, giving his readers the silver linings they were looking for.

A rose on its coat lapel,/ A cane on its arm, a-swing,/ Charles Street strolls in the afternoon/ Down through the city of spring!/ Oh spirit of life and lilt,/ Oh spirit of dream and song,/ With old St. Paul's on its sentinel hill/ With a finger upon the throng.

McKinsey on Light Street:

Bark and brigantine and schooner,/ Tugs with barges in their train/ With the gurgle in the basement and the far off whistle score/ Oh how I love this dear old corner of Baltimore.

And on Cathedral Street:

A fine old street is Cathedral street,/ Where the ghosts of old time city meet./ A fine old street, a charming place,/ Upon whose lintels one may trace/ The achives of vine and rose,/ Where still the honeysuckle grows.''

One can imagine the guffaws should such writing find its way into today's Sun. But at that time, it worked.

In 1915 Mayor James H. Preston decided that Baltimore should have an anthem. The mayor had just met Frederick Huber, then a member of the faculty of the Peabody (who later was to help organize the Baltimore Symphony). Huber proposed a contest.

A prize of $250 was offered for a poem to be set later to music. More than 800 entries came from a dozen states. After a blind reading -- the names of the contestants were removed from the manuscripts so the judges would not be swayed by reputation or prejudice -- Folger McKinsey won the prize.

The words were set to music by Emma Hemburger and sung at every important civic occasion. Every Baltimore school child today either knows the words by heart -- or should. Sixty-five years after McKinsey wrote the poem and 30 years after his death, Mayor William Donald Schaefer, standing among hundreds gathered in the Inner Harbor to welcome The Pride of Baltimore home from her winter cruise, led a rousing chorus of McKinsey's overripe words. Earwitnesses noted that the mayor was in fine voice:

Baltimore where Carroll flourished/ And the fame of Calvert grew./ Here the old defenders conquered/ As their valiant swords they drew.

And finally, to a tempo that suggested drums beating and that set pulses quickening:

Here are hearts that beat forever/ For the city we adore/ Here the love of man and brothers,/ Baltimore our Bal-tee-MOR-R-R-E.

Folger McKinsey would have enjoyed the sentimentality of the occasion. He probably would have written a poem about it.