Every week Lembeck, who is also a member of the Savannah Philharmonic chorus, produces a new ditty for Kiwanis members to sing before their morning meeting. On one occasion, Savannah Philharmonic Artistic Director Keitaro Harada joined Kiwanis members as a guest speaker and Lembeck fine-tuned the morning song in his honor.

“The Kiwanis members really got into it,” Lembeck said. “I knew Kei [Harada] as the conductor of the Savannah Philharmonic Chorus, but that’s when he realized I could write crafty songs.”

A few weeks before the annual outdoor concert, Harada approached Lembeck about writing lyrics to fit the beloved event’s theme, “Savannah the Beautiful” to the tune of the classic American hymn, “America the Beautiful.” That same day Lembeck sent Harada a couple of options to choose from.

“I’d written a lot of songs about Savannah and its beauty at our Kiwanis meetings,” Lembeck said. “It was pretty easy to tailor lyrics to fit the Phil the Park event – especially when I already had the tune.”

Lembeck said he has enjoyed writing lyrics since attending summer camp as a child and wrote lyrics for various events throughout high school and into his work life whenever someone was having a party or being honored in some way. He said the important thing is to find words that are easy to sing and that fit the cadence of the melody so everyone can enjoy singing it.

“It comes to me naturally,” Lembeck said. “When I was asked to do this, I was really quite flattered. The fact that 20,000 people could sing a song that I wrote is really a hoot and a half.”

The crowd was invited to sing these lyrics accompanied by the Savannah Philharmonic Orchestra:

How beautiful Savannah is!

The original “America the Beautiful,” lyrics were first printed as a poem in a weekly newspaper, The Congregationalist, on July 4, 1895. Author Katharine Lee Bates, a professor at Wellesley College, was inspired to write the poem by the beauty of Pike’s Peak during a trip there in 1893. The words were later set to the tune of composer S. A. Ward’s “Materna,” and quickly became one of the nation’s best-loved patriotic songs.