A memorial has also been created in Youngstown at Lake Park Cemetery. Bennard retired to Reed City, Michigan, and the town maintains a museum dedicated to his life and ministry. The Old Rugged Cross uses a sentimental popular song form with a verse/chorus pattern in 6Ĩ time, and it speaks of the writer's adoration of Christ and His sacrifice at Calvary. Published in 1915, the song was popularized during Billy Sunday evangelistic campaigns by two members of his campaign staff, Homer Rodeheaver (who bought rights to the song for $50 or $500 ) and Virginia Asher, who were perhaps also the first to record it in 1921. The completed version was then performed on June 7, 1913, by a choir of five, accompanied by a guitar in Pokagon, Michigan, at the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Pokagon. Gabriel, a well-known gospel-song composer helped Bennard with the harmonies. George Bennard finished "The Old Rugged Cross" and on the last night of the meeting Bennard and Mieras performed it as a duet before a full house with Pearl Torstensen Berg, organist for the meeting, as accompanist. Mieras from Chicago to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin where they held evangelistic meetings at the Friends Church from Decemto January 12, 1913. As a Methodist evangelist, Bennard wrote the first verse of "The Old Rugged Cross" in Albion, Michigan, in the fall of 1912 as a response to ridicule that he had received at a revival meeting. After his conversion in a Salvation Army meeting, he and his wife became brigade leaders before leaving the organization for the Methodist Church. George Bennard was a native of Youngstown, Ohio, but was reared in Iowa.
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