I had to say thank you today. Actually, I ended up singing thank you and playing thank you as well, because the woman being thanked was someone who played a gigantic role in my very earliest experiences as a musician in Colton, South Dakota- and mere words could not begin to express my gratitude for what she meant to me and to our whole family.
Her name was Joyce Farr, and she was an incredibly vibrant member of First Lutheran Church in Colton, SD- my dad’s first parish- and a precious friend of our family. (In a future blog, I’m going to share the beautiful eulogy of Joyce that my dad delivered at the funeral- which will also spare me the intimidating challenge of trying to summarize the life and legacy of such an amazing human being.)
My most powerful connection with Joyce in those earliest years of my childhood was through music. Joyce was a passionate musician with a gorgeous soprano voice as well as a breezy, elegant ease at the piano despite not being able to read music. She had the gift of being able to play the piano by ear- and nothing gave her greater joy than to be seated at the piano, leading spirited sing alongs. Combine her musical gift with her warm and joyous personality and you can begin to understand how Joyce made such a deep impression on me from a very early age. My mom and dad would talk about how I was completely enraptured by Joyce’s piano playing by the time I had turned 2-years-old, and would watch her with the fierce attentiveness of someone who desperately wanted to be able to do what she was doing. By the age of 4, I was taking piano lessons from a 14-year-old girl who lived across the street from us; at that point, we didn’t yet own a piano, so I had to be taken across the street from our parsonage to the church and do all of my piano playing there. (Maybe that’s why my musical life has been intertwined with the church ever since.)
But my musical connection to Joyce had as much to do with singing as it did with playing the piano. From a very early age, I loved to sing along to the church liturgy at the top of my little lungs (the rising line of “Lo-o-ord Ha-a-ave Mer-er-cy!) being a particular favorite. It was Joyce who got the idea that I should sing some solos for the various ladies aid groups and bible study groups that were always meeting at the church in those days. Most of the time, I would be standing on the piano bench right next to Joyce – and she would play as I would sing “Jesus Loves Me” or “Two little Eyes to Look to God” or “Praise Him! Praise Him, all you little children. God is love! God is Love!” Apparently, I was quite the fearless little singer back then …. but I was not a fan of applause. The sound of clapping apparently scared me, so whoever was listening to my little performance would be asked to please refrain from applause. (At some point, I got over my aversion to applause!) But otherwise, I loved doing it – and it gave Joyce such delight to help make it happen. (Oh, what I wouldn’t give for one photo that captured one of those occasions.) It was Joyce to helped me understand that singing was a way to experience joy and to share it with others- and that understanding penetrated me very deeply and is very much with me to this very day.
We moved away from Colton in 1965, when I was just 5 years old – but Joyce and her husband Cecil remained very special friends to us, even across the many miles that separated our two families. We would get together whenever we could- and those get-togethers always involved singing … and it gave Joyce great joy to see music continue to be a really important part of my life. I remember with special fondness a pleasant experience in the summer of 1978 – which actually sprung from something most unpleasant …. a serious case of mononucleosis that struck me at the start of the summer tour of His Gang, a group comprised of our family and our friends the Martinsons. I was way too sick to continue, so Joyce and Cecil agreed to take me in and allow me to convalesce at their lovely house outside of Colton. I regretted the circumstances but it was a sweet and unexpected gift to be able to have two weeks with the Farrs. It was almost like a grounding experience just ahead of beginning the new adventure of college.
I also remember how good it was to be with Joyce and Cecil for the saddest chapter in my family’s life- the unexpected death of my mom. Joyce and Cecil were actually able to join the rest of my family for Thanksgiving at our family farm in Kenyon, where Steve lived at the time. (I had to work, so I missed out) and mom and Joyce were able to enjoy one last wonderful time together. Three days later, during the drive back home to Beloit, my mom was stricken- and despite desperate medical intervention, died very quickly. It was a devastating blow to all of us. My family deeply appreciated how Joyce and Cecil made their way to Wisconsin for the funeral, and then remained an extra day to help us ‘celebrate’ my brother Nathan’s birthday. Having Joyce there just made it seem like the world was still spinning and that life, someone, would go on for us. And in a really tender and beautiful moment, we invited Joyce to try on several of my mom’s favorite dresses and invited her to take whichever dresses she wanted to have. I can still see Joyce standing there, plain as day, looking so beautiful in the dress that my mom had worn for Matt and Randi’s wedding. It didn’t seem the least bit odd- it was wonderful and absolutely right for this woman that my mom loved like a sister to have these dresses to enjoy as a remembrance of her dear friend.
That was in 1988. Three years later, I married Kathy- and Joyce and Cecil came to Racine for that celebration. And in one of my favorite moments from that entire day, Joyce joined me for a duet in the music program that we had before the dinner. (When you have as many musical friends as Kathy and I do, it seemed ludicrous not to give some of them a chance to sing or play or whatever they wanted to offer up.) I remember introducing her as one of my earliest and greatest inspirations as a singer- and then asked her if she had anything she wanted to say. I remember her saying something about how amazed she was that I would want someone “who sings like an old tea kettle” to sing with me on this program with so many accomplished and trained musicians – but she joined me in a duet version of the old hymn “Jesus, thy boundless love to me.” It was no longer “Jesus loves me” like in the days of Colton, but it was the same joy as always – and SO beautiful!
The last time I saw Joyce was in the summer of 2015, when Kathy and I were on our way home from a visit to Yellowstone. By this time, Cecil had died and Joyce was in a nursing home just a couple of blocks from the church where she and I had made music together a half century earlier. She was still Joyce in spirit but confusion had begun to encroach on that vibrant mind of hers. But she still loved to sing- and she could still remember her favorite hymns. I sang with her that day- and even caught a few fleeting moments in a video on my phone, just so I could always remember what I was fairly certain would be our final opportunity to sing together.
Today was Joyce’s funeral – and I would have moved heaven and earth, if necessary, to be there to offer a musical tribute to this irreplaceable woman. It was a service that Joyce very much planned, and she chose five congregational hymns for the occasion: “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” “Beautiful Savior,” “Borning Cry,” “You are Mine,” and “For all the Saints.” (I absolutely love the fact that this 90+ year old woman wanted five congregational hymns at her funeral – and that two of those five hymns were contemporary hymns!) My dad was asked to offer up a spoken eulogy- and I was invited to offer what Joyce’s son Dean called “a small concert.” They wanted me to sing whatever I thought would be fitting- whatever I thought Joyce would have wanted sung. Their only request was that I sing an old Gospel song called “In my Father’s House are Many Mansions” because Joyce’s sister Betty, a blind classically trained singer who did some concertizing, sang that particular song at many funerals. I went on Youtube and found a recording by none other than Elvis Presley, and managed to learn it and was happy to share it. I included it in a little suite of pieces that included the aforementioned “Jesus thy boundless love to me,” a composition of mine called “Caleb’s Song,” and finished with a blending of “Love divine, all loves excelling” (the last thing Joyce and I sang together) and “Amazing Grace,” the last song that Joyce herself sang, just days before she died. And in some not-so-small miracle, I was able to sing through the lump in my throat and pay tribute to Joyce in this way. And in a great gesture of graciousness, the organist of the church invited me- if I was interested- to play the organ for anything in the funeral that I might want to play. I ended up playing the prelude, the postlude, and the final hymn- “For all the saints.” And the rafters rang!
That church has stood in the heart of Colton, South Dakota for 140 years. The town itself is struggling for life, like so many small midwestern towns are struggling – but the church itself remains remarkably untouched by the decline around it.
And its beautiful sanctuary is almost exactly as I remember it- right down to the now-worn pews in which I stood and sang the liturgy at the top of my lungs all of those years ago.
The altar, pulpit, stained glass windows, and even the lighting fixtures are all the same – and as I heard my voice roll out into that sanctuary, I couldn’t help but feel like I was completing an amazing circle by offering my humble tribute to the woman who helped me begin that circle, whose beautiful voice rang out in that sanctuary for so many years- and still rings in those rafters to this very day and beyond.
P.S.- One of the most wonderful moments today occurred right after the funeral when a woman came up to me and introduced herself: Virginia Boen, my first piano teacher! I asked her when we had last seen each other, and she is pretty sure that she has not seen me since we moved from Colton in 1965. (She actually belonged to another church in town, which is why our paths would not have crossed on any of the occasions when we were back in Colton for various church anniversaries.) She says that she vividly remembers giving me piano lessons way back when – but that what she remembers about me more than anything was how well I was able to tell time at the age of 4. She also said that she had been a bit nervous to give lessons to someone so young- especially because she herself was only 14 years old at the time! – but she said that it proved to be a lot easier than she had expected. What a joy to be able say a heartfelt thank you to her.
