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Cheer For Kurn Hattin To Us So Dear

We'll Cherish Fond Memories Tho Far We Rove

As Kurn Hattin Homes for Children states, Every Kurn Hattin student and alumni knows the Kurn Hattin Alma Mater - Cheer For Kurn Hattin. It was written in 1944 for Kurn Hattin’s 50th Anniversary by Westminster, Vermont resident and postmaster, Margaret Wright Bent. It goes as follows:

‘Mong the hills of old Westminster is a place we hold most dear,
Where the birds sing ever sweeter, where the air is always clear.
High above the peaceful valley, that can be compared to none,
Stands our own beloved Kurn Hattin, It’s the place that we call home.
We are grateful for the blessing, sent that each may have a share,
For the plans for our enjoyment, For the tender love and care.
There’s a kindly friendly spirit; There’s a sense of joy and cheer,
That surrounds us at Kurn Hattin, Makes us thankful to be here.
Cheer for Kurn Hattin! To us so dear. We’ll strive for the standards Set for us here.
We’ll cherish fond mem’ries Tho’ far we rove. Cheer for Kurn Hattin! The school we love.

For the childhood survivors of Kurn Hattin Homes, this song they were forced to sing for the alleged financial benefit of Kurn Hattin and for the pleasure of the local besotted maudlin Vermont gentry, instilled irony even then.

Westminster Vermont residents are proud of their town. It was Vermont's first town and alleged site of the so-called 'Westminster Massacre,' Westminsters own self-styled first battle of the American revolution. Incorporated in 1735 as Township No. 1, Westminsterites still think of themselves as 'Number One' in Vermont. A state of mind in many Vermont towns. To paraphrase Orwell's manipulative pigs in the ultimate example of the systematic abuse of logic and language to control an elites underlings, All Vermonters are equal, but some Vermonters are more equal than others. The survivors of Kurn Hattin Homes for Children may not have been allowed to "become native by adoption" but they've made history and in doing so, have recorded the truth of Westminster's legacy for children. So, perhaps there was a massacre in Westminster afterall: a metaphorical massacre of vulnerable children.

From the book, The History of Westminster Vermont:

Westminster is not only rich in her own history but overflowing with her contributions to the welfare of our country. Her people have gone forth in various paths of life. She has raised poets, musicians, writers, lawyers, politicians, doctors, ministers and teachers. Her youth have been inspired to further their education and by doing so have made this world of ours a better place to live. Her native born have traveled far. Still others returned and have given the best in them to make our town what she is today. Then there are those who have become natives by adoption. They too are making history.

Margaret Wright Bent not only penned fantastical opportunistic public relations material for Kurn Hattin, she also recorded Vermont folk music for the Committee on Traditions and Ideals of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont’s Commission on Country Life. In 1929 the Committee was tasked with rejuvenating some of Vermont’s 18th and 19th century “pioneer stock” history and published a collection of traditional Vermont songs for a book: Vermont Folksongs and Ballads.

A part of University of Vermont / Kurn Hattin Homes President Guy Bailey’s Eugenics Survey of Vermont, the Commission undertook its study "to see if anything could be done to better the living conditions in which so large a part of our population is born and grow up." The commission membership was initially made up of three hundred self-described "progressive citizens of the state." Eventually, two hundred of them formed into 30 committees and sub-committees, each charged with investigating a particular aspect of rural Vermont life.

The Committee on the ‘Handicapped’ (handicapped placed in scare quotes by Prof. Henry Perkins to replace Feebleminded) was chaired by Kurn Hattin Homes for Children Executive Director, William I. Mayo, Jr.. His role and his committee’s role were to ensure the enactment of eugenical sterilization law in Vermont. The committee was successful to that end in 1931, two years before Nazi Germany enacted a similar law based on American legislation and sterilization law model upon which the Vermont law was based.

Cheer for Kurn Hattin, to us so dear!

The Committee on Traditions and Ideals adopted militant language. The state had to "maintain an unbroken front against the forces which more and more will be destructive of Vermont's peace and beauty unless held at bay. The dreaded forces that so threatened Vermont? They were the tasteless nouveaux riches and the recently automobile-mobile low-class tourist, or immigrant. Vermont author Dorothy Canfield Fisher, a member of the Committee on the Conservation of Vermont Traditions and Ideals, elaborated on both in pieces she published.

These people have much in common with Vermonters and are distinct from those Americans "of the same sort who manufacture, or buy and sell material objects or handle money." She cautions prospective home buyers while searching for a second home in Vermont. “Advice and information should only be sought from "people of your own kind."

That such comments appear in publications paid for and produced by the state's Publicity Bureau indicates the extent to which theories of typing and exclusion dominated the thinking of Vermont's elite classes and were accepted by it. The Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award was renamed in response to the author's legacy that is said to be tainted by her zealous participation and promotion of the Vermont eugenics movement. ... Vermont Pathocracy