A lot of my columns have their genesis from e-mail forwards and this one came to me that way. It was a forward of Kate Smith singing "God Bless America" and a few facts about the song. Curiosity got to me and I went looking.

I didn’t remember that Irving Berlin had written the song. He immigrated to America with his parents in 1893 when he was 5 years old. The family was Russian and the name was Beilin, which was transcribed as Berlin when he published his first piece of music. His first big hit song was "Alexander’s Ragtime Band", written in 1911. He wrote several moderately successful musicals in the early 1920s and actually wrote, but decided against using, "God Bless America" in 1917 for a patriotic musical revue. As his career progressed he began writing many hit musicals including his best known one, Annie Get Your Gun.

Berlin began writing for films in the late 1920s, writing film musicals including the film Holiday Inn that introduced "White Christmas". He married twice having lost his first wife to pneumonia after only 5 months of marriage. Though the Irish Catholic girl who became his second wife was disinherited by her wealthy father, Berlin assigned the rights to "Always" to her, thus assuring her financial future. He died in 1989 at the age of 101 after having become very reclusive in later years.
Kate Smith was born in Washington, D.C., in 1907 and loved singing and dancing from her very early years. She was discovered by a producer from New York in 1926 and did several musical comedies.

Her radio career began in 1930 and her movie career in 1932 and she’d been making records since the late 1920’s.

Kate Smith delivered her first performance of "God Bless America" over the radio on Nov. 11, 1930. She has been forever linked to the song since then. Berlin had signed over the royalties to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. It is known today as America’s second National anthem and near his death, Berlin called it the song closest to his heart. Kate Smith predicted to Berlin that "God Bless America will still be sung long after all of us are gone" and that has proved to be the truth.

Throughout Kate Smith’s career, she was single. In the 1970s she became the unofficial mascot of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team when she opened their games with her rendition of "God Bless America.” They said she inspired them to win two Stanley Cups in 1974 and 1975.
She died of complications of diabetes in Raleigh, North Carolina June 17, 1986. Her remains were interred in a private mausoleum at St. Agnes cemetery in Lake Placid, N.Y. In 1999 she was posthumously inducted into the radio Hall of Fame.
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t is no exaggeration to say that "God Bless America,” a song written by a Russian Jewish immigrant who used his voice to sing his way out of the slums and sung so beautifully by Kate Smith is one of the most beautiful songs ever written.