The Alma Mater

The United Daughters of Confederacy offered a prize of five dollars to a high school student who submitted the  best song for adaptation as the school's official Alma Mater.  I don't know whether it was the honor or the money that appealed to me at the time, but with a great deal of midnight oil and mother's ability to write out the notes as I hummed them to he.  My entry was ready for submission near the end of my senior year.  Mine was the only song with both original words and music.  It went like this:

"With loyal hearts we praise thee,

the school we love so well

May every heart rejoice and sing,

and sound ore hill and dell,

The stately walls shall ever stand

a symbol strong and time;

Come, sons and daughters,

comrades all, here's Cheraw High to you!"

-Henry Westbrook Finlayson

I ran across this little piece written in dad's handwriting.  Westbrook wrote the winning Alma Mater entry which was used by Cheraw High School (Cheraw, South Carolina) for years.