Northern Indiana veterans health clinic named for late congresswoman

A 1963 regulation enacted by the Normal Meeting designated “Indiana,” by Arthur Franklin Mapes, of Kendallville, because the official state poem.

INDIANA

God topped her hills with magnificence,

Gave her lakes and winding streams,

Then He edged all of them with woodlands

Because the setting for our goals.

Beautiful are her moonlit rivers,

Shadowed by the sycamores,

The place the aromatic winds of Summer time

Play alongside the willowed shores.

I need to roam these wooded hillsides,

I need to heed the native name,

For a pagan voice inside me

Appears to reply to all of it.

I need to stroll the place squirrels scamper

Down a country previous rail fence,

The place a choir of birds is singing

Within the woodland . . . inexperienced and dense.

I need to study extra of my homeland

For it is paradise to me,

There is not any haven fairly as peaceable,

There is not any place I might somewhat be.

Indiana . . . is a backyard

The place the seeds of peace have grown,

The place every tree, and vine, and flower

Has a magnificence . . . all its personal.

Beautiful are the fields and meadows,

That attain out to hills that rise

The place the dreamy Wabash River

Wanders on . . . via paradise.

(Photograph offered by U.S. Postal Service)