Whose handprint on “Footprints”?
Most people are well familiar with the “Footprints” poem. This touching poetry describes a Christian noticing two sets of footprints in the sand as he walked with Jesus, only to discover there were times when only one set of footprints were outlined in the sand.
Dismayed, the person assumed Jesus had left him to walk alone, but he finds out that the one set of footprints belonged to Jesus as He carried the individual during the difficult times in his life.
Well two people are in federal court trying to get a judge to determine who is the author of that famous poem.
I’ve always seen the poetry attributed to an unknown author, but the Religion News Service recently reported that Basil Zangare of Shirley, N.Y., claims the poem was written by his late mother, Mary Stevenson, in the 1930s and that she registered it with the U.S. Copyright Office in the 1980s.
However, an evangelist named Margaret Fishback Powers, who lives in British Columbia, is the only one with a registered trademark for “Footprints” and “Footprints in the Sand,” according to her attorney.
At stake, I suppose, are product licensing profits, but perhaps it’s merely the right to say that the author that many of us previously thought unknown is … not.
– Carla Hinton
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