I WOULD BE TRUE hymn....story behind it

I Would Be True

Howard Arnold Walter

1883 -1918

I would be true, for there are those who trust me; I would be pure, for there are those who care; I would be strong, for there is much to suffer; I would be brave, for there is much to dare.

If you want to get somewhere in life, you need to write a personal mission statement. Or is it a vision statement? Or is it a short list of life goals (as opposed to objectives)?

The life-is-to-be-managed lingo confuses me. There must be a simpler way-—-maybe that modeled by young Howard Arnold Walter. A recent graduate of Princeton, Walter sailed to Japan for a year—to teach English at Waseda University. From Tokyo he mailed his Connecticut mother a two-stanza poem written as a private exercise. "My Creed" listed eight idealistic "I woulds."

Impressed with the son she had raised, Mother Walter submitted the verse to Harper's Bazaar. An editor said yes, and the magazine published the personal creed in 1907. Cecilia Margaret Rudin astutely comments that the poem "combines true social and ethical action with a certain boyish and gallant spirit of chivalric ideals."⁵

Walter returned to the States, went to seminary, and then, ready to change the world, he sailed to India as a YMCA staff member—and there, still a young man, he died of influenza in 1918.

In 1911 Walter's creed inspired a tune, composed by Joseph Peek, and the song quickly spurred a generation looking for courage. Including a nine-year-old schoolboy.

"It was the Pittsburgh of 1925," writes my friend and mentor, Dr. Kenneth L. Wilson, "when the steel mills owned the sky and the air. While, my mother spent a year In a sanitarium, I lived with an aunt and uncle."

Ken transferred into a new school, where he felt outclassed by the mysteries of long division. "It was as if I had been dropped into another country that was speaking another language." It was a hard, lonely year that is somewhat redeemed in Ken's memory by having learned one song in religious, "released-time" classes at the Methodist church.

The heartening words were distributed to the students: the first verse (see above) and the second:

I would befriend of all, the foe, the friendless; I would be giving, and forget the gift; I would be humble, for I know my weakness; I would look up, and laugh, and love, and lift.

Ken survived the year and returned home-—-to his mother's welcoming arms. He left that chilly school, with two treasures: the code to unlock the "divided-bys" and a creed that has shaped his life. "The words meant enough even then to cause me to remember them all this time."

Now reflecting on his four-score years—a life of honor, a career as a leading religious journalist defending truth, befriending the needy around the world—Ken soberly wonders: for a young boy did the words mean what they mean now "for one who has lived out most of a long life and who knows how far short of the shining 'would-bes' life sometimes comes"?

Age may have dampened his "boyish and gallant spirit," and yet Ken still sings the song, a creed that, says Rudin, "contains almost all that we need in life."

"Well, almost. It seems that a slightly more mature Howard Walter identified an element missing from his original purposeful statement. Some time before his premature death, he tagged on a third verse:

I would he prayerful through each busy moment; I would be constantly in touch with God; I would be tuned to hear his slightest whisper; I would have faith to keep the path Christ trod.

"I Would Be True"-—-the total package. A life mission statement? Maybe not as the life managers would define it.

But as a guide for life, it was good enough for my friend Ken. As a young boy. As a magazine editor and husband and father. As an older man with time still left for the new day's "I woulds," reality-tempered as they may be.

And it's good enough for me.

How about you?

Lord, help me to be true to you and to the ideals to which you point us, not because my salvation hinges on my ability to measure up. But because my witness may direct someone else to you and the redemption you offer.

..........

From the book "Spiritual Moments with the Great Hymns" by Evelyn Bence