Fort Scott's forgotten poet

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Editor's Note: The following was submitted by Fred Campbell, Jr.

Fort Scott has had two poets in its history that became known nationally during their writing careers: Eugene Fitch Ware whose penname was "Ironquill" and Albert Bigelow Paine. Both men made their fame as poets during the period of 1880 to 1930 each had poems published in newspapers, magazines, and books throughout the United States. In Fort Scott today we remember Eugene Fitch Ware by naming an elementary school after him and Albert Bigelow Paine by the high school annuals of the 1920's that quoted his poems throughout their contents. In the 1920's Paine's writings were studied as part of the high school English curriculum and late in his career he became a member of the Pulitzer Prize Selection Committee. It is at this time of year that another local poet comes to mind when we approach Veteran's Day, once called Armistice Day, on November 11. His name was John Scott Penny.

John S. Penny was born in 1848 on his parents' farm in Des Moines County, Iowa.

He married Irene Hixon in 1881, and two sons were born to this union. In 1894 the family moved to an eighty acre farm near Devon. Six-and-a-half years later they moved to Fort Scott so their sons could further their education by attending high school and possibly the Kansas Normal College. John Penny became an employee of W.C. Gunn as a real estate agent for his emigration business.

W.C. Gunn would buy land from the original homesteaders along the Kansas and Missouri border at a low price; then advertise it for sale in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana at a higher price. He then would bring excursion trains from those states to Fort Scott to travel out to view and possibly buy the land.

John Penny worked for W.C. Gunn in this capacity for fourteen years and became experienced in the field of real estate and insurance. In 1914 he left the employee of W.C. Gunn and opened a real estate, insurance, and loan office on Main Street in Fort Scott. He spent the remaining years of his working life in the insurance business.

In 1906, the Penny family purchased the property at 1233 S. Judson in Fort Scott and lived their until 1929 when it was sold to J.B. Penniman. Later, the property would become the home of Betty Ruth Penniman Willard, and today, it is the home of R.O. Willard, both cousins of John Penny.

John Penny died in Fort Scott in 1933 and his wife, Irene, died in Springfield, Missouri in 1948. They are buried in the Centerville Cemetery located one and one-half mile south and one-half mile east of Devon

John Penny was a prolific poet. He wrote "rhyme," as he called it, about all things around him in the natural and spiritual world. The most common thing or incident could become one of the subjects for his poems. He wrote well over 500 rhymes from 1915 until 1931. He wrote in the "down-to-earth" style of one of America's best-loved family poets, Edgar R. Guest. He was published in newspapers in Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri on a regular basis. In 1917, he copyrighted and published a 134-page booklet entitled "Short Poems at Odd Hours" containing 141 of his poems. Today, John Penny's papers are in the possession of R.O.Willard

He was thrust into the national spotlight in 1919 when he was one of 13 poets world wide to write an answer to the iconic poem of World War I, "In Flanders Fields," written by Lt. Col. John D. McCrae, a Canadian physician, following the death of his best friend in the Second Battle of Ypres in the lowlands of Flanders in 1915 on the French/Belgian border.

The British lost 264,000 men in the three battles of Ypres over a three-year period. To the British nation, Flanders was hallowed ground. McCrae wrote the poem while looking out over the butchered earth all around him created by the thousands of high explosive shells that had been pulverizing the land for months. It was spring and in spite of the tortured earth the red poppies of Flanders began to grow and bloom -- thus the title and the poem. John McCrae was killed in action in 1918.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place: and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short Days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

John Penny's answer in rhyme was shared with the people of the United States in 1919.

The World's Answer

Sleep on in peace, ye honored dead

While larks are singing overhead;

The sacrificial blood you shed

Will be the bond in coming years

To bind as one two hemispheres.

So was your life not spent in vain.

Although you lie among the slain,

With poppies blowing overhead,

In Flanders fields.

The torch ye threw from failing hands

We're holding high at your commands;

And though you lie beneath the sod,

We're keeping faith with you and God,

And all who met war's stern demands,

In Flanders fields

The poem "In Flanders Fields" is inscribed on the top of the main entrance to the Memorial Hall. John Penny's poem, "The World's Answer," is not, but perhaps it should be. The Memorial Hall was built in 1924 to memorialize the American dead who fought and died in World War I. For a brief moment in 1919, Fort Scott was celebrated in the national press by the writing of this patriotic poem, and John Penny was hailed as a literary patriot by the Bourbon County Historical Society that same year. I believe it is time for a grateful community to again recognize John Penny's poetic genius and never forget him again.