When the U.S. Naval Academy Band strikes up “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Navy games, every uniformed spectator shows respect for the Maryland-born anthem with a dutiful salute.
“You would never see someone not doing that,” said Dan Drew, a trombonist and the band’s operations coordinator. “It’d be like someone smoking in an office these days.”
It’s been 75 years since an act of Congress made Francis Scott Key’s poem the official national anthem on March 3, 1931. The anthem holds special meaning for Marylanders and military members alike, since the poem depicts the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore on Sept. 13-14, 1814. And while the level has changed over the years, bandleaders and others say the anthem is still regarded with respect, especially in a post-Sept. 11 world where U.S. soldiers fight overseas.
Even so, Orioles baseball fans have added their own local, sometimes controversial, twist on the lyrics, while others say many Americans suffer from anthem ignorance.
A Harris poll showed that 61 percent of Americans do not know the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” said John Mahlmann, executive director of the National Association for Music Education.
“We knew that anyway,” he said. “When you look at sporting events or the Olympics, it’s obvious people don’t know the words to it.”
His organization advocates the performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in school music programs through its National Anthem Project. The public outcry against Roseanne Barr’s spitting-and-crotch-scratching rendition in 1990 proved the nation’s respect for the anthem, he said, but education and performance is lacking.
“I think (the anthem)’s gone downhill, and needs to be taught more in schools,” he said. “We don’t watch someone say the Pledge of Allegiance — we all participate.”
Mahlmann hopes the National Anthem Project will be “particularly impressive” when its road show hits Baltimore around September.
Today, most people associate “The Star-Spangled Banner” with local sports events. Terrapin fans along the University of Maryland, College Park Comcast Center’s student wall are always respectful and hold the anthem in high regard until its completion, said L. Richmond Sparks, band director of the university’s Mighty Sound of Maryland.
But the homage to the Baltimore Orioles inserted by some fans irks Sparks. It takes the form of an abrupt, shouted chorus of “O!” — not at all on key — from some students during the “Oh, say does that?” phrase.
“I think it’s out of place,” Sparks said, noting he has addressed the student body about it before. “The band hates it too. We notice it so much when we go to tournaments away. We’re sitting there in Greensboro (N.C.) and there are some quackers in the stands going ‘O!.'”
The Baltimore Orioles do not promote the anthem “O!” cheer, said Spiro Alafassos, executive director of communications for the team.
“You could see it a lot of ways,” he said. “Obviously we don’t encourage it, but at the same time it’s their right. Part of the song’s meaning is the right for us to express ourselves.”
Alafassos said he watches people’s reactions to the anthem from his office, which overlooks the promenade running the length of the Camden Yards outfield. Most people who are eating or waiting