Bernie Davidson’s "Massachusetts"
Still Rings in Patriot’s Day
By Susie Davidson
Advocate Correspondent
RANDOLPH – At a Patriot’s Day assembly, schoolchildren from the Maria Hastings School in Lexington sang a song called "Massachusetts".
This song, the Official Massachusetts Patriotic State Song, is a little-known ditty penned by Bernard Davidson of Randolph, who died two days before Patriot’s Day (and his birthday, April 21) in 1996.
Signed into law in 1989 by then-Governor Michael Dukakis, the song’s history is a story in itself. Davidson, Department of Public Works Commissioner for Randolph, and a longtime energy conservation crusader as well as youth hockey coach, wrote the song in response to a news story about a Randolph High School student who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Although Davidson was a lifelong Democrat and hardly a flag-waving conservative, something in him was touched off by that act. His Russian and Romanian immigrant parents, Vera and Phillip Davidson, greatly valued the freedom and opportunity accorded to them in this country, and he wanted to give something back.
But the road was long. Davidson had the high school bandleader set the piece to his melody, and he then embarked on a crusade to take the tune to the top. He sang the song himself whereever he felt it would bring it recognition, including numerous times at the State House in front of full committee meetings.
For these actions, he received front page write-ups in newspapers, which seemed more to chide than commend his effort. Boston Magazine went so far as to name Davidson a recipient of a "Worst of Boston" award. A nadir to anyone else, Davidson saw it as a newfound challenge, and he forged on, along with his "Green Up-Clean Up," OPEC (Organization to Promote Energy Conservation), tree planting, energy conservation poster contests, traffic safety and other initiatives.
State Representative John Flood of Canton finally decided to sponsor a bill that would name the song the official patriotic song of the Commonwealth. No one was more surprised than Bernie when he was summoned to the State House with his family in 1989 for the bill’s passage.
"We don’t know how he got it done, but he got it done," recalls School Committee member Robert Gass. "He was persistent … every time I’d give Bernie a hard time, he would threaten me that he would sing the song again." The song has been sung at Patriot’s Day events in Randolph, Lexington and other Massachusetts towns since. Like the struggle for freedom the holiday connotes, it too was a hard-won victory for a memorable citizen.