Like millions of other immigrants to America, Edgar Albert Guest (1881–1959) worked hard, overcame adversity, made good, and loved the land that gave birth to his dreams and ambitions.
He was born in Birmingham, England. In 1891, his mother and father moved the family to Detroit, Michigan. There, at age 11, Guest began working odd jobs to help out at home when his father was temporarily unemployed. In his early teens, he found work as a copy boy at the Detroit Free Press.
When Guest was 17, his father died, and he left high school to support his family, working his way up at the paper from police reporter to columnist when in his mid-20s. By the time he was 30, nearly all his writing for the paper appeared as poems in a column titled “Breakfast Table Chat.” These daily verses soon became wildly popular and were at one time syndicated in over 300 newspapers. Published in 1916, his poetry collection “A Heap o’ Livin’” eventually sold a million copies, a phenomenal record for any book but particularly so for poetry….