ALEXANDRIA, Pa. — A church official says the clergyman credited with helping to push Congress to insert the phrase "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance has died in Alexandria, Pa. The Rev. George M. Docherty was 97.
Nancy Taylor, historian for the Huntingdon Presbyterian Church, says Docherty died on Thanksgiving at his home in Alexandria, with his wife, Sue, by his side.
Docherty delivered a sermon saying the pledge should acknowledge God in 1952 at Washington's New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, just blocks from the White House.
On Feb. 7, 1954, he delivered it again after learning that President Dwight Eisenhower would be at the church. Congress inserted the words a few months later.
When President Dwight Eisenhower attended on Lincoln Sunday, February 7, 1954, Docherty preached a sermon calling for the addition of "under God" to the Pledge. As a result of his sermon, the next day President Eisenhower and his friends in Congress began to set the wheels in motion to amend the Pledge of Allegiance to include the phrase. On February 8, 1954, Representative Charles Oakman (R-Mich), introduced a bill to that effect.[
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I'll always be grateful to the guy. In 1967 I started to refuse to say the pledge or even stand up while others did. After sitting in the vice principle's office for several homeroom periods, they had to let me skip homeroom for the rest of my last three years in high school.
The religion thing was the key as to why they couldn't make me participate in the pledge. I hated that sadistic, drunken, Mick VP. I got into it every time I could with him. I didn't always win but I made sure he knew what I thought of him.
After I turned 21, I went to the bars where he guzzled with his buddies and menaced him, until he had to quit drinking in bars altogether. I was slight at the time and not very intimidating. Guys like that are always cowards.
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