This morning I sang for the funeral of LaVerne Guttormsen, the mother of our good friend Lynda Guy.  (Lynda was married to my long time WGTD colleague Bill Guy.)  She was 86 years old yet her death came unexpectedly; fortunately she left behind very specific instructions for her funeral – and among them was that I was to sing How Great Thou Art and The Lord’s Prayer.  I was pleased to oblige because I really liked LaVerne and was sincerely honored that it was so important to her that I be the soloist – and because she was the kind of strong-minded person who was not easy to turn down, and still isn’t -even from the grave!

I have a number of vivid memories of her, but one of them actually came at a sad time-   right before Lynda lost Bill to liver cancer back in 1999.   We bumped into each other at the hospital one day (I was on my way to see Bill and she was just leaving) and I will never forget her saying in that unmistakably plainspoken manner of hers,  “This is really lousy – that these two people found each other and loved each other so much but won’t be able to live out the life they should have had.”  Actually, I can’t precisely remember the end of the sentence,  but the first words were precisely “This is really lousy,”  and of course she was exactly right.  And there was just something about the way she talked in unvarnished, honest terms that I really appreciated that day.

There was another reason why I was pleased to be a part of the funeral today, quite apart from my affection for LaVerne and my friendship with Lynda.  It was also good to be back at Grace Lutheran Church, which is actually the very first place I sang a solo in Kenosha back in the fall of 1986.  Grace was the church where my dear friend Everetta McQuestion was a member-  and as my personal Welcome Wagon to Kenosha, she introduced me to everyone in the arts community and then arranged for me to sing a solo at her church.   And that was my first meeting with Bill Roth, the organist there who once upon a time was the college organist at Carthage.  Bill was my kind of accompanist- vigorous and unapologetic, and with him I could – and needed – to sing out with all the voice I had !  I sang one of the Messiah bass solos- either But who may Abide or The Trumpet Shall Sound- and had the time of my life- and over the subsequent years have enjoyed each and every time that I’ve been asked back to sing there.  Bill is not the kind of organist who plays with perfection, to put it mildly, but he plays with great heart; singing with him, despite the wrong notes and unpredictable tempos, is still tremendously inspiring.   And singing at Grace today – my first time there in several years – felt like a homecoming of sorts.  There was a different pastor up front (a young man on crutches, as a matter of fact) and Everetta and many other familiar faces are now gone,  but the room itself is exactly the same, with the same bright, flattering acoustics and  that big pipe organ right behind me-  and dear Bill playing in that same inimitable style of his.   And as I stood there and cut loose, it seemed impossible that twenty two years have come and gone since my first time there.  May there be many more times to come.