What is the song that the public school children used to sing in May in front of John McDonogh's statue in Lafayette Square? Also, flowers were put in front of his statue. Please help us remember.

Jamie Temple

Dear Jamie,

The song you remember -- " The McDonogh Ode," sung to the tune of "Maryland, My Maryland" -- was composed by Myrrha Font, a local public school teacher. And just in case you've forgotten them, here are the words:

O, wake the trumpet of renown,

Far-echoing a hero's name.

Oh, bring the shining laurel crown

That marks the glow of honored fame.

McDonogh! Let the trumpet blow

And with the garland twine his brow;

Extol him with your voices now:

Praise to him, all praise to him.

He sought not paths where glory shone

Nor dreamed of fame in Southern lore.

Twin cities claim him for their own,

New Orleans and fair Baltimore.

He gave his wealth to educate;

He lived that end to consummate;

His memory, then, perpetuate.

Praise to him, all praise to him.

McDonogh, unto thee we rear

A monument of fairest art

In memory of thy high career,

Enshrined within each grateful heart.

Now ready hands your offerings bring,

Now youthful tongues laudations sing

Until the heavens with echoes ring:

Praise to him, all praise to him.

The song was sung for the first time on Dec. 29, 1898, when the McDonogh monument was unveiled. There were multitudes of school children, school and public officials when Mayor Walter C. Flower accepted the statue for the city. He ended his speech by saying, "It stands there facing the City Hall, as a constant reminder to our people of the benefits he has conferred."

John McDonogh was an eccentric millionaire widely regarded as a miser who left a fortune to build schools in New Orleans and Baltimore. He died in 1850, and in his will he made a simple request that "it may be permitted annually to the children of the free schools to plant and water a few flowers around my grave."

McDonogh was buried in McDonoghville Cemetery in Gretna, but in 1860, his remains were removed and interred in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. Even so, the children of New Orleans kept bringing flowers to his grave until 1899.

But in 1892 a movement had begun, and New Orleans schoolchildren contributed pennies to build a monument to their benefactor. Six years later there was more than $7,400 worth of pennies! The monument -- the design of Attilio Piccirilli -- consisted of a marble shaft with a bust of McDonogh at the top. A boy and a girl stood at the bottom reaching upward with a garland.

Then it became a tradition that on the first Friday in May delegations of children from the public schools in New Orleans would converge on Lafayette Square. To the music from school bands, children carrying flowers, wreaths, and garlands filed past the monument to pay tribute.

When City Hall was moved from Gallier Hall on St. Charles Avenue in 1958 to Perdido Street, so was the site of the celebration. A new statue by Angela Gregory was commissioned and placed in Duncan Plaza. It was there the school children gathered to pay homage. And McDonogh Day was renamed Founders' Day to recognize many others who played an important role.

However, more than the name and the place of the celebration were changing, and the godfather of public schools became surrounded by controversy. You see, McDonogh was a slave owner who, to his credit, devised a plan for his slaves to become profit-sharing workers and buy their freedom. But because the celebration was segregated and the black children had to wait to deliver their flowers, one of the first organized protests of the civil rights struggle in New Orleans was the McDonogh Day Boycott in May 1954. And although McDonogh's money had been used to construct more than 30 schools, his name was removed from many of them in the late 1980s and 1990s.