10/15/2008:
In May of 1948, Edward J. Flanagan, a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, died. Maybe you’ve heard his name; maybe you haven’t. He was, however, a man who lived by his work.
In 1917, Father Flanagan founded a Home for Homeless Boys in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1921, because of inadequate facilities, he established Boys Town, a facility ten miles west of Omaha. More than an orphanage, this blossomed into a community for troubled boys. They had a boy mayor, schools, chapel, post offices, and other facilities. Boys could come and receive education and learn a trade. A movie called Boys Town was even made about it, in 1938; Spencer Tracy played Father Flanagan and won an Oscar for his part.
On this day, a few months after Father Flanagan’s death in 1948, Devils Lake was witness to a musical concert put on by group of boys from Boys Town. On their third annual tour, the boys were travelling around North Dakota, and the rest of the Midwest, under the direction of Rev. Francis P. Schmitt. They were between 12 and 18 and were from twenty different states, and their voices ranged from young boy sopranos to adult bass.
They sang “folk songs of our own and other lands, old favorites … sacred selections and others in a modern vein.” They sang from Panis Angelicus to Old Man River. According to one reviewer from Grand Forks, “To see and hear them evoked more emotion than the music was capable of stirring. Forty-five boys who have seen more trouble and sorrow than falls to many in a whole life time stood for an hour and a half, deeply intent on creating, successfully, something beautiful.”
The program in Devils Lake was sponsored by the St. Joseph’s Catholic Church and took place at the Central high school auditorium at 8:15 p.m. Advanced tickets sold well, perhaps due to the comments reported of the concert throughout their work. And “few musical presentations here (in Devils Lake) have drawn so many favorable comments” as this one did.
It was an opportunity they might never have had, without Father Flanagan. It may have been a mouthful to call them, as so many did, Father Flannigan’s Boys Town choir, but according to the Devils Lake Journal, it was a pretty earful to hear, too.
Sources:
Devils Lake Journal, Monday evening, October 18, 1948
Devils Lake Journal, Friday, October 15, 1948
Grand Forks Herald, October 13, 1948
Grand Forks Herald, October 12, 1948
Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_J._Flanagan>