by Nicholas Bernhard

This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.

The birth announcement: once a small source of income for local newspapers, now a source of ‘likes’ and ‘engagement’. A few get cut out and pasted into the family scrapbook. A birth announcement in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town provided one of the play’s hidden laughs. On Instagram, a tasteful “Say hello to our new baby boy” might come across your feed. If the parents consider themselves nerds, they might hit you with a horror like “A New Challenger Has Appeared!” In print or in social media hell, the birth announcement seems doomed to ephemera.

This Father’s Day, I was thinking of a birth announcement from 1905. It was written by Lafayette, Colorado resident Harry C. Kephart. I remembered Kephart this past weekend because in his hands, the lowly birth announcement transcended into literature.

Harry C. Kephart, c. 1905

Harry Kephart was born in Iowa in 1870. He married Olive Dennis in 1895. They moved to Colorado in 1901. Like Doc Holliday before him, Kephart hoped Colorado’s dry climate would improve his health. He became the pastor at Lafayette’s Congregational Church (now the Arapaho Center Theater).

Harry C. Kephart was the pastor at Lafayette’s Congregational Church. Photo by Pen8uin, licensed under CC SA 4.0. This photo was taken when the name of the building was the Mary Miller Theater; it has since been renamed the Arapaho Center Theater.

In addition to his pastoral work, Kephart edited the News Free Press in Lafayette. He wrote editorials condemning the town’s racism. He went on to work for the Anti-Saloon League of Colorado.

The Kepharts’ house on Cannon Street in Lafayette, Colorado, where Harriet was born.

On August 20, 1905, Harry and Olive’s daughter Harriet was born. This was what Harry Kephart sent in to the Lafayette News:

Last Sunday evening between 7 and 8 o’clock there came to our home a little stranger. Her transportation reads, ‘From the house of many mansions.’ She bears the insignia of royalty. She had the light of other worlds in her eye, and upon her features the unmistakable working of divinity. We know nothing of her past, and neither by work or sign does she reveal her plans for the future. Her age is a mystery. She may be one day old. She may be older than the fixed stars. She sleeps and dreams and mutters strange and mysterious words from a language which I know to be older than the sea or winds and more difficult to interpret. We do not know how long she will be with us, another day, a week, a month, or she may be here when we are gone, and tired, oh, so tired of this round of earthly years. She will some day go out through the silent and mysterious doors of death in the arms of those who brought her here.

Olive Kephart, center, with daughters Harriet and Helen on either side, 1906. Public Domain.

That’s more than Instagram engagement, that’s the secrets of the universe. That’s holding time and space still to say, “You matter, little one. You matter to me.” I’d say Kephart deserved a pretty nice card for those words, but alas, the first Father’s Day wasn’t until 1909.

SOURCES:

– Lafayette, Colorado History: Treeless Plain to Thriving City, Lafayette Historical Society, pp. 245-246

– Colorado Historic Newspapers

The post Op-Ed: Our History Shows The Potential Of Birth Announcements appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.