Another Edgar Guest Story
This has little to do with anything, but I recently made an interesting discovery. We were going through some photographs that my grandfather had taken. Alva Wetterlin lived from 1897 to 1984, and spent fifty-plus years working for the Railroad. Amongst his photographs and mementos, I found a yellowed newspaper clipping.
Evidently, it had been sent from his mother (my great-grandmother), clipped from the newspaper on February 18, 1919, and inscribed with the words: “To Alva, With Love, Mother.” This was a far more formal day than ours, so such words were far warmer than they sound to our ears.
At any rate, the poem that she mailed to him was the same poem that I had typed up and posted at my desk in the early days of my career. How I got my copy, I do not know, but I have always had an eclectic love for the written word. Somehow, this same poem that was mailed to my grandfather–and which he saved amongst his cherished belongings until his death–was the same poem that meant so much to me and helped teach me what it meant to be a man in this confusing world. I believe that this piece influenced me in a way that led me toward leadership, perhaps as one of the many tools God used to gently form and shape my character, even though the author puts far more emphasis on “the flag” than I ever would.
Here, then, is the poem that touched a 22-year-old, future grandfather in 1919, and his grateful grandson sometime around 1985:
There Will Always Be Something to Do
By Edgar Guest
There will always be something to do, my boy;
There will always be wrongs to right;
There will always be need for a manly breed
And men unafraid to fight.
There will always be honor to guard, my boy;
There will always be hills to climb,
And tasks to do, and battles new
From now to the end of time.
There will always be dangers to face, my boy;
There will always be goals to take;
Men shall be tried, when the roads divide,
And proved by the choice they make.
There will always be burdens to bear, my boy;
There will always be need to pray;
There will always be tears through the future years,
As loved ones are borne away.
There will always be God to serve, my boy,
And always the Flag above;
They shall call to you until life is through
For courage and strength and love.
So these are things that I dream, my boy,
And have dreamed since your life began:
That whatever befalls, when the old world calls,
It shall find you a sturdy man.