Researching Lloyd Stone

Because they are both set to the same music from Finlandia, This Is My Song / A Song of Peace is sometimes inaccurately called the Finlandia Hymn. The Finlandia Hymn is more appropriately applied to the work that appeared seven years after A Song of Peace was published — when the words of the Finnish poet Veikko Koskenniemi were set to Sibelius's music.

Lloyd Stone was also an illustrator and composer.

Lloyd Shelbourne Stone was born 29 Jun 1912 in Coalinga, Fresno County, California. His parents, Lowends Columbus Stone and Gurtha Emalaine Marr were born in Missouri and married there in 1910 before moving to California. In California, Lowends Stone got a job as a “well puller” working for the Associated Oil Company of Coalinga, California, on the Shawmut Lease. His mother worked as a seamstress.

Lloyd Stone attended Lindsay High School, Lindsay, California, graduating in 1930. He was president of his class in his Junior year. He then attended the University of Southern California, majoring in music.

He wrote the poem This Is My Song before (or at about the time of) his graduation from USC.

He was planning to be a teacher, but instead, in 1936 at age 24, he joined up with a circus on its way to Hawaii.

He didn't stay with the circus for long, but he did stay in Hawaii. After a short stint as a designer in a jewelry shop, he joined the staff at Kulamanu Studios as pianist-composer. While at Kulamanu Studios he composed a large part of their modern dance music.

His poetry was praised in a Hawaiian newspaper, The Islander:
"Mr. Stone is probably among the most versatile contributors to the arts of whom Hawaii can boast. His poetry reflects Hawaii. He does not sing of the palms and the surf, but of the earthy human beauty which is the heritage of the islands. He finds his niche as an interpreter of that which lies beneath the lovely outward shell of Hawaii. He has made Hawaii his home. And Hawaii is fortunate."

The Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii passed a concurrent resolution in 1951 "bestowing the honor and title of poet laureate of Hawaii (Ka Haku-Mele O Hawaii)" on Lloyd Stone.

He wrote many books of poetry while in Hawaii, illustrated his own works and those by others, taught in the public schools of Hawaii, and also created and sold greeting cards.

After spending many years in Hawaii, he alternated residency between California and Hawaii. He served as state president of the California Federation of Chaparral Poets in 1982.

His father died in Lindsay on 30 Jan 1978. His mother lived to be 100, dying on 03 Dec 1987.

Lloyd Stone died, age 80, in Visalia, Tulare County, California, on 09 Mar 1993.

His two-line obituary in the Fresno Bee described him as “a retired teacher,” and made no mention of his poems, his being the poet laureate of Hawaii, or his well-known Song of Peace.

Although his poem has appeared as a hymn in 26 hymnals, there is nothing that suggests Lloyd Stone was particularly religious himself. By the late 1930s, "A Song of Peace" had become a favorite of the Wesleyan Service Guild of the Methodist Church. The executive secretary of the Guild, Marion Norris, asked Georgia Elma Harkness to give Lloyd Stone's poem a more Christian character. Harkness recalls writing her stanza sometime during the period 1937-39 while she was teaching at Mount Holyoke. It became the official hymn of the Wesleyan Service Guild. Not all hymnals include this third verse meant to "Christianize" the hymn.