5th Grade History Songs

During the 1970-71 school year I was 10 years old and in the 5th grade. I was in the beginning stages of finding interests and passions that I'd keep for the rest of my life: puppetry, baseball and American History.

The reason for the last one on the list has a lot to do with a learning tool that my 5th grade teacher, Miss Dietz, used to help her students understand the revolutionary war. It was a record album.

As a 5th grade student at Brensinger School I was not very interested in anything to do with classroom work. I was interested in anything but the subjects being taught.

When we started learning about the revolutionary war during our "free time" to work on projects the teacher started playing a record with songs about the heroes of the Continental Army.

The tunes were not only catchy and memorable but the lyrics told the stories of the individuals who helped the patriots win the war. It featured songs about General George Washington, German General Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin Von Steuben, Henry Knox (Fort Knox is named after him) and Timothy Murphy.

These songs were so entertaining and conveyed the story of those initial American heroes so effectively that even at age 49 I still think of them from time to time. I even sing them from time to time. Of course I sing them to myself because no one else would know them.

The chorus of the song about George Washington says:

He was more than a picture on a postage stamp.

He was more than a face on a dollar bill.

He was more than the subject of a Gilbert Stuart portrait.

Not a man standing stiff, not a man standing still,

But a man of action with a job that must be done.

General George, General George Washington.

That was my favorite song of the entire album. In honor of that song I have put the portrait of Washington mentioned in the lyrics at the top of this post.

This brings me to yet another portion of my childhood I've recovered from the Internet. With just the lyrics to the chorus written above I did a search for the album. I didn't find a copy of the record but I did find a down loadable version of a concert by the Texas Boys Choir featuring the songs of the album called "The Continental Soldier". They are the exact same songs I listened to as a 5th grader. You can listen to them yourself at: http://www.boychoirs.org/texas/tbc006.html

So now I have those songs saved on my computer and can listen to them whenever I want a refresher course on the heroes of the Revolution. They will always take me back to the days when I was an impressionable young 5th grade boy whose interest in history was sparked by simple thing like a teacher playing a record album. After 40 years later I've finally come to appreciate it. Thanks Miss Dietz.