Songtime Hymnstory
The year is 1913 -- Homer Rodeheaver makes his
way to the platform in the Tabernacle at Columbus, Ohio. The crowd of 5,000
anticipates the excitement yet to come. Homer has chosen a new song - written
because of a car accident.
Ina Ogdon was to speak at Chautauqua (a Methodist camp
in western New York) in the summer of 1912 when her father was injured
in an automobile accident, just days before her planned departure. Choosing
to remain home and care for her father, Ina may have disappointed the worshipers
at Chautauqua but millions more have been blessed instead. Determined to
brighten the corner where God placed her, she overcame despair and disappointment
that set in at home that summer and penned the words that were to brighten
so many lives.
Homer stands in the Billy Sunday Tabernacle at Ohio with
trombone in hand. At the first notes, the dust rises from the sawdust floor
as thousands jump to their feet. Then the air fills with the music and
the words of Ina Ogdon's poem written that fateful summer of 1912. For
the next 22 years, "Brighten the Corner" would open every Billy
Sunday meeting and become the theme song for the Sunday campaigns.
Mrs. Ogdon thought she would reach thousands that summer but instead she has reached millions (more than 25 million copies of her song have been printed). Billy and Homer gave the song to over 100 million in the two hundred tabernacles they built. Even to this hour, my partner and I - as we do the Billy Sunday story -open the singing with "Brighten the Corner" - thus proving once again that "God's ways aren't always our ways but they are the best ways".
Bill Dagle - Hymn Historian