Angus Smith Hibbard (1860-1945) wrote the text to “Father in Heaven,” #133 in our hymnbook. A chorus from BYU-Idaho sang this hymn at last April’s General Conference (see YouTube link below).

Father in Heaven, In thy love abounding,
Hear these thy children thru the world resounding,
Loud in thy praises, Thanks for peace abiding,
Ever abiding.

Filled be our hearts with peace beyond comparing
Peace in thy world, and joy to hearts despairing.
Firm is our trust in thee for peace enduring,
Ever enduring.

God of our fathers, strengthen ev’ry nation
In thy great peace where only is salvation.
So may the world its future spread before thee,
Thus to adore thee.

Hibbard wrote music as well as poetry, including one, um, “composition” that you are almost certainly familiar with, but which I’ll bet your children will neither recognize nor understand.

Hibbard was neither a poet nor a musician by profession — he was an electrical engineer, specializing in the development and networking of the telephone. He founded the Wisconsin Telephone Co. almost as soon as the telephone was invented. He later recalled how the phone was received in those early days:

In Wausua in 1881 he demonstrated it to two lumberjacks who were just in front the woods. After connecting with a caller on the other end of the line, he offered the phone to the pair. One of them held it up to his ear, “and said in a gruff unnatural voice, ‘Hello!’ and then dropped the instrument as if it had been red hot, exclaiming, ‘Well, I’ll be damned. Come on out of this, Pete! It said, “Hello yourself!” Can you beat that!’” A Swedish immigrant, amazed at the power of Hibbard’s technology, blurted out, “By yiminiy, she talks Swedish!”

In Milwaukee Hibbard at first employed telegraph messenger boys to connect callers at the switchboard, but he soon found their streetsmart ways were not well-adapted to polite customer service. Greeted by an unhappy phone customer, “the boys sassed back and telephone exchanges became, in many places, exchanges of loud and lurid language … Boys would be boys and they seemed to have in them some kind of uncontrollable deviltry that made them practically unendurable as telephone operators. They became impossible, they blew up — and a cry for help arose in the land. At once from here, there, and everywhere came the girls. Almost at once, before we could realize it, the telephone girls were seated at switchboards in all parts of the country, giving such service as had not been thought possible before, smoothing out the difficulties and bringing down blessings on their heads.” [Wisconsin Historical Society. “Old Wisconsin Archive”]

In 1894, Hibbard connected the branch meetings of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers — one group in New York City, the other in Chicago — by telephone, “so that the subject matter of the evening could be discussed by the two gatherings of electrical engineers. … it is, perhaps, the first time the telephone has been used for such a purpose, at least for so long a distance,” according to report of the New York Times.

The blue bell symbol of the Bell Telephone Co. was his design, and it was his idea to use it to mark the location of payphones. He was one of the first executives to use a company organizational chart. (It was also his idea to pave over the Chicago River in the downtown area … I guess every genius has to be allowed a few brainstorms that go nowhere …)

Hibbard was a parishioner at Chicago’s St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church, and most or all of his hymn texts and tunes were written for his own congregation. He was such a beloved, longserving fixture of Presbyterian Episcopal life in Chicago that when he died, no one could remember just how long he had served in this position or that — his obituary writer contented himself with noting that he had served “for years and years.”

Oh, and that other “composition” to his credit? Angus Smith Hibbard invented the telephone “busy signal.”

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Deseret Book has just published a revised and enlarged edition of Karen Lynn Davidson’s uber-classic Our Latter-day Hymns. The story of Angus Smith Hibbard is but one of many examples of new material in this edition. Kudos to Karen Lynn Davidson, and thanks to Deseret Book for its publication — but why, oh, why, does Deseret Book put hard covers on stupid little throw-away gift books, but insist on issuing much-used reference books like Our Latter-day Hymns and 40 Views of Brigham Young in the thinnest of paper covers? When I’m in charge of the world, I’ll make better decisions for publishers.

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