To the editor:

I’m so angry it brings me to tears. If no one else will stand up for Kate Smith, I will. For her to be denigrated is wrong.

I was born just after World War II ended. We always listened to the radio back then — you know, the big ones that stood on the floor. I never heard her sing those two songs, but even if she recorded them in the 1930s, she was never a “racist.” Kate Smith is a national treasure. She raised $600 million in war bonds to help fund the WWII effort. She traveled nearly 520,000 miles to entertain American troops. (It wasn’t white troops; it was all troops including black, Native American, Muslim, etc.) Think of our young soldiers, many just boys, who were fighting in the war not knowing if they would come home … how she brought joy and a little bit of home to them. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She donated all her royalties from “God Bless America” to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America. Everyone around here remembers her as being a nice, gracious person, my aunt included, who said she used to come in the bookstore where she worked. She left a bequest to St. Agnes RC Church in Lake Placid, where she was baptized. Now the Rotary will take her name off the annual music award — despite the fact that SHE donated the money for it.

Everything is being carried too far. We may be a more enlightened society now when it comes to race, religion and gender identity, but to shun someone who did so much for everyone, for America, is just plain wrong. We should bring her statue to Lake Placid and place it on Buck Island, her summer home. I hope someone has the guts to ask the Flyers for it.

Jennifer Zahn

Saranac Lake

(Editor’s note: After careful consideration, the Rotary Club decided Thursday to keep Kate Smith’s scholarship in her name).