A POET AND THEY DIDN’T KNOW IT: HOW ‘H.H. JAMES’S’ POEM ENDED UP AT F.D.R.’S D.C. FUNERAL

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

GRAVENHURST — He was a poet and they didn’t know it.

Dr. James Hogg Hunter was an accomplished writer, author and editor of the Evangelical Christian Magazine, who lived in Gravenhurst from 1951-’63 and took the train to work in Toronto during the week returning home weekends.

Including 12 to 15 books and for various periodicals and magazines, he also wrote poetry, which few were aware of outside of the magazine readership.

“He was quite prolific,” said his son Ian.

Hunter penned them under the nom de plume of H.H. James, a commonly used reversal of his initials.

He later laughed, ironically, that his pseudonym appeared on what he believe was his most memorable piece.

‘Life’s Symphony’ is a poem recognizable to anybody who did — or still — attends funerals or celebrations of life. It uses the metaphor of music to describe life’s journey.

It’s more often attributed to an “anonymous” or “unknown” author, said his son.

But that’s not true. There’s much more to the story and man behind these words that begin with:

“Just to be kind, to be tender and true.

Just to be happy the whole way through,

To lighten the burden to someone each day,

For never again will I pass this way ….”

Hunter was a well-known figure in Gravenhurst. A big Presbyterian Scotsman who lived on Bay Street at the northeast corner of what is now Clairmont Road an intersection now under construction.

His Scottish brogue could be widely heard anywhere between main street and Muskoka Bay.

Closer to home it was his young neighbour, Ross Draper, who heard it most loudly as a pal of Hunter’s son Ian.

And when, again ironically, the former neighbours both moved to Orillia years later they fortuitously re-connected.

“Dr. Hunter played an important part in my life,” said Draper who saw him “quite a bit” while growing up “across the street a stone’s throw away.”

Years apart in ages, Draper who was the “morning man” at CFOR Radio once sought the counsel of the elder statesman.

Life had caught up with the 33-year-old outgoing singer and broadcaster — who changed his radio name to Rusty — and he paid Hunter a visit.

“I told him I thought he was the only person I could speak to in confidence,” Draper said.

“My radio career was going well and I started drinking. But inside my life was just falling apart. I just really felt a need. I thought what minister could I trust and just open up to. I couldn’t think of anyone.”

Hunter wasn’t a minister, “but he sure preached a lot” welcoming Draper with open arms into his upstairs office.

“R-R-R-oss,” said Hunter “have you ever known J-EE-sus as your Saviour?”

“I had never heard Jesus pronounced like that. And he showed me the way to salvation. And I’ll never forget that meeting. So Dr. Hunter means a lot to me.”

Thus began Draper’s recovery “about a year later” and his path toward “accepting the Lord” and beginning a post-radio career as a Baptist minister, globe-trotting evangelist and “Bible smuggler.”

Though they spoke few times after before Hunter died in 1982, Draper points to that one sit-down as a life-changing conversation.

He truly espousd the good neighbour policy.

And so later as a minister himself Draper could often be heard unknowingly reciting the poem of his neighbours at funerals.

It’s all in Draper’s book “Put the Kettle On Honey, I’m Coming Home” — his morning show sign-off, which still resonates deeply today with listeners in Muskoka and Orillia.

Fast forward 50 years to today and Rusty, Ian, fellow child neighbour Robin McNabb and Allan Boyd meet Tuesdays on Zoom to chat and reminisce about their long, varied and interesting lives now they are in their late 70s.

“Here endeth the story …,” Draper laughs.

Not in his life.

During an August call, H.H. James’s “fascinating” story resurfaced.

“Dr. Hunter! The guy I know. I was up in his office,” gasped Draper.

Hunter had long told his family that when Franklin Delano Roosevelt died April 12, 1945, the poem was recited during the four-day state funeral in Washington. D.C.

FDR was the 32nd President of the United States — 1933 to 1945 and only president serving beyond a second term. His passing was five months before on Sept. 2 that year the war ended 80 years ago this week.

Ian believes when the poem was read it was said to be “anonymous.”

James Hogg Hunter had written the piece and in October 1932 published it in the Evangelical Christian Magazine. Ian has as the original 93-year-old clipping in a file folder.

He says it was anthologized in various poetry magazines “and always just stated as ‘anonymous.’”

“It was 100 per cent written by Dad,” says Ian, too, an accomplished author of 8-9 books and a former columnist with the ‘National Post’ and ‘Globe and Mail.’

James “Jim” Hunter also wrote for the Globe for decade after arriving from Scotland in 1912 — before it merged with the Mail and Empire (as did my grandfather Walter Clairmont).

Hunter received his honorary doctorate in English literature from Houghton, a Christian University in New York. His third novel ‘Thine Is the Kingdom’ — based in Muskoka — won his publisher’s prize as its third best of the quarter century, Ian said.

Hunter did get to “realize my conversion the last time I saw him at the annual Presbyterian venison dinner in Orillia” where three times Draper said he “had the joy to speak.”

The book of Rusty according to Avery

And as if that’s not a good story, Draper added that Martin Avery another former Gravenhurst resident who’s been living in China for several years — and author of “1,001 books” —  wrote to say he was writing a story on Muskoka and wanted to “dedicate chapter to Rusty Draper.

“He’s a wordsmith to a T.”

A few days later, Avery corresponded to say he’ll write a whole book on Draper.

So, look forward to more on Rusty, Hunter, Gravenhurst, Orillia and who know what … stories and book to come.

You can also follow Rusty on Facebook where he, too, is a prolific poster.

A reading of Life’s Symphony according to Hunter’s apostle Rusty Draper.

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