Generald Wilson is set to sing the national anthem at Monday's Chiefs game, adding a commemorative note to a Kansas City sports weekend that already has carried his voice through three straight appearances. He performed Friday at the KC Current game and is scheduled again for the Sporting KC match on Saturday before taking the field Monday.
Wilson, a retired Navy Petty Officer First Class, said the moment begins long before he reaches the microphone. He centers himself with a prayer before taking the field, asking, "Lord, let them hear you through me. Take me totally out of the way," and saying, "I want them to feel you through me." For him, the anthem is not just a performance. It is a brief chance to pull a crowd into the same song and, for a little more than one-minute-and-a-half, into the same purpose.
That purpose carries more weight this weekend because the nation is marking 25 years since the September 11 attacks. Wilson said he cannot ignore the anniversary as he heads to perform. "Yeah, I definitely am. I mean, you cannot not think about it," he said, adding, "It's something that you'll never forget."
He ties that memory to what he sees as a fading instinct for collective unity. Wilson said the country came together after the attacks, but "we're missing that" now. "I'm about unity," he said, and he wants listeners to understand that difference should not keep people apart. "When I'm singing, I want them to understand that no matter what the differences are, no matter what we're going through, still love on each other," he said. "You put away your differences, all of your differences, and now I tricked you for one-minute-and-a-half. You're singing one song together. That's the whole thing for me."
By Monday, that idea will reach its biggest stage of the weekend. Wilson's anthem at the Chiefs game is the last stop in a run that links three Kansas City sporting events to the anniversary of September 11, and the schedule itself gives the performance its meaning: Friday, Saturday and Monday, with the final note falling on the day the nation is most likely to be listening for what unity sounds like.
