It was 11:04 last night that I signed on to Facebook for what I thought would be one last little visit before heading on up to bed, where my wife already was. But then a message came in from a facebook friend with these ominous words: Isn’t it sad about Kathy Hoadley? – a classmate of ours from Luther. I could hardly type the words of my reply fast enough: I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please tell me! And that’s when she told me what she had learned from another classmate on Facebook- that Kathy had died the previous day, the victim of a massive heart attack. And from that moment to this one, I have been scrambling to find some sort of official confirmation while hoping against hope that it was all some awful mistake. Most of all, I’m just trying to take it all in and trying to imagine how such news could possibly be true. And certainly looking at this photograph from choir tour 30 year ago (taken by another classmate, Scott Henry) with the young, smiling, friendly face of Kathy Hoadley beaming out from its center does not make it any easier to believe it.
I can’t begin to make sense of this turn of events- especially because I know nothing about her death apart from what I’ve written here- but I can celebrate all that I admired about this towering, warm-hearted woman with a voice as distinctive and memorable as she was.
I’m not exactly sure when and where I first met Kathy Hoadley – but I know that within moments of meeting her she was already explaining that she was from Kasson-Mantorville. . . a consolidated school district in southern Minnesota. . . and there was something so endearing about the warm pride in her voice with which she talked about her school. And although I had to ‘google’ it just now in order to get the correct spelling, I remembered the name vividly and correctly even all of these years later. Maybe it’s because Kathy’s speaking voice was nearly as gorgeous as her singing voice, which was nothing less than a force of nature, and there was something so melodious about the name of her school as it tripped off her tongue.
I have no idea when I first heard her singing voice- but I knew that I had never heard an alto voice like it. (Nor since.) The sound was immense and warm and with a lovely sense of flow and evenness that not all young big voices have. But she was also innately musical and expressive… able to sculpt phrases so tenderly… which was also something exceedingly rare for a young singer with a huge voice. ( I was much more apt to roar through everything in a style which my sister in law Polly once called “Super Blast Auto Pilot.” ) Put another way, the first word you would use to describe Kathy’s singing would not be “loud”- even though she could blow the walls down if she so chose – but rather “beautiful,” “mature,” “opulent” . . . Take your pick!
And yet, for as gifted as she was, Kathy was so down- to- earth . . . so “ma and pa and apple pie” . . . warm and generous and much more comfortable deflecting the spotlight to others than hogging it for herself. And maybe the highest praise I can pay her is that I never heard one single negative word said about her by anyone. . . not even by her fellow altos, 🙂 many of whom had to have been the superstars of their respective high schools but now finding themselves in the shadow of such a unique voice. But it would have been utterly contrary to Kathy’s nature to have played the prima donna. She loved the beautiful alto voices of Barb Tostenrud and Nancy Nickerson and Karen Skoglund and Edye Gausman and Julie Sorenson (just to name a few) and knew as well as anyone did that beautiful voices come in all colors and shapes and sizes. Kathy wore her astounding gifts with such grace because she very much appreciated the gifts of others- which made it all the more possible to appreciate her gifts.
If I shut my eyes, I can still hear her incredibly gorgeous voice in “Sometimes I feel like a Moanin’ Dove” – a solo she had with Nordic that allowed her to display everything that made her a great singer. Mr. Noble dedicated the song to the Iranian hostages, and as Kathy sang those first two verses about feeling like a “moanin’ dove” and a “motherless child” audience and choir alike found themselves tasting the despair of those hostages, even as we reveled in that warm, beautiful voice which she spun out so tenderly. And then when she unleashed that voice in all its brilliance with “sometimes I feel like an eagle in the air” – with this priceless smile on her face – it was like all the clouds in the sky were dispersed in an instant, never to return. It was a transcendent moment for all of us privileged to be part of it, night after night. I also remember with such admiration the heartbreaking beauty with which she sang “He was Despised” for Luther’s annual performance of Messiah, three years in a row.
I’m not sure I’ve mentioned that Kathy Hoadley stood well over six feet tall (I wish I knew exactly how tall she was) – and when a woman of such amazonian dimensions steps forward to sing a solo, you have this expectation that the sound that will roll out of her will be awesome in size and beauty. . . an expectation which is really not reasonable at all, but there it is. But when Kathy began to sing, it was exactly the sound you imagined and even more. That’s really saying something.
One more story- which happens to be appropriate for this Valentine’s Day. As a gift to a good friend of hers who was feeling somewhat lonely, Kathy asked if I would be willing to take her friend out to dinner…. and she gave me the money for it. I was happy to do so- and the evening (which was on or right around Valentine’s Day) went fine. Unfortunately, Kathy hadn’t made it perfectly clear to her friend that all of this was her idea rather than my idea – and I ended up having to puncture this young woman’s mistaken impression that I had romantic feelings for her. As I’ve told that story from time to time over the years, it’s always been a story about my own enormous discomfort at being at the heart of such a misunderstanding. . . but as I think about this story tonight, in the wake of yesterday’s news, I’m seeing it instead as a story of tender-hearted friendship and of Kathy’s sincere wish to do something nicefor this friend of hers. And although it ended in more complicated fashion than any of us would have wanted, it was still such a sweet gesture on her part.
When I was back at Luther for my 25th class reunion, it was wonderful to see so many classmates, but it was especially great to lay eyes on Kathy Hoadley- now Kathy Hoadley Franz- and to hear that she was singing and teaching voice and making so much of her considerable gifts. I was thrilled to learn that. And then this past summer, I reconnected with a high school classmate from Atlantic, Iowa who now a music professor at a college out east. (I interviewed his sister on my morning show about a memoir she had written, and that’s how Mark and I reconnected. ) It turns out that Mark had collaborated with Kathy on a number of occasions and greatly admired her and her gifts. It’s hard to explain how delightful it was for me to find two people from two completely different chapters of my life crossing paths in this way, and especially how gratifying it was to see this gentle, good-hearted woman doing so well.
It is exactly this which makes this turn of events so utterly bewildering and even more sad.
And it also makes me realize that when I blow out 50 candles on my birthday cake on Tuesday, I would be incredibly foolish to waste a single moment lamenting the occasion. Because for as disconcerting as it might be to reach the half-century mark, reaching it at all is a gift not to be taken for granted.
I like the idea of my classmate and friend, Kathy Hoadley Franz, teaching all of us an invaluable lesson about cherishing our gifts. . . and especially the gift of life itself.
pictured above: I was so glad to find this photo from a group of choir tour photos sent to me by classmate Scott Henry. It is sobering to realize that the young man sitting across from her, Michael Branscom, passed away a number of years ago.