In Honor of George M Cohan
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A weekend of events in Fox Point honoring the nation’s independence kicked off Saturday with a celebration for perhaps one of the city’s most patriotic sons: Broadway composer and playwright George M. Cohan.
A crowd of more than 100 mostly elderly people sitting in lawn chairs and waving little American flags celebrated Cohan’s birthday by listening to Kevin Doyle and Mary Lee Partington, of the local Celtic folk troupe Pendragon, perform some of his most famous songs, including “Give My Regards to Broadway,” “The Yankee Doodle Boy,” and the popular World War I song, “Over There.”
They also heard renditions of George Gershwin tunes by Full Circle Jazz and lauded longtime Rhode Island School of Design professor Michael Fink, who received the second annual George M. Cohan Award for Excellence in Art and Culture at the event.
The celebration took place in a small plaza at the intersection of Governor and Wickenden streets, where a bronze bust of Cohan sits atop a large granite marker.
It followed a historic walking tour of the neighborhood that highlighted, among other things, the Irish immigrant community that grew on the Fox Point waterfront during the late 1800s that Cohan and his family were a part of.
Sy Dill, a resident who organized the event, says the modest gathering is a way to celebrate Fox Point’s rich history, the impressive career of one of its own, and the nation’s independence. “It’s a way to bring the neighborhood together,” he said.
Dill and his wife, Judi, spearheaded a campaign to have the bust of Cohan placed in the plaza last year after being disappointed that there wasn’t an appropriate tribute to the man in his hometown besides a small plaque in front of the Boys and Girls Club of Providence headquarters, about a block down from the plaza, which marks the spot where Cohan had been born.
“His songs are everlasting. They’ve been played for more than a century and hopefully they’ll be played for another century more,” Dill said.
Later in the evening, the U.S. Army Band and Chorus performed just a block away at the recently redesigned India Point Park overlooking Narragansett Bay. On July 4, the city will host its annual fireworks display on the Fox Point waterfront starting with musical acts at 7:30 p.m.
Cohan was born July 3, 1878, in a cold water flat on Wickenden Street and performed in his family’s vaudeville act before striking out for New York City, where he became known in the decade before World War I as “the man who owned Broadway” because he wrote, produced and starred so many musicals there.
He’s considered the father of American musical comedy and his life and music were depicted in the Academy Award-winning film “Yankee Doodle Dandy” in 1942, the year he died.
A statue of Cohan –– wearing a suit and clutching a walking cane and a fedora –– stands in Times Square in New York with “Give My Regards to Broadway,” one of his signature songs, etched on the pedestal below.
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