Thursday, September 22, 2011

Glory of Love

The young girl from Detroit started singing and modeling in the 1920's while she was just a teenager. Her face could be seen in Hudson Department Store ads all across the region. Then a local radio show heard her singing at her Catholic church and decided she should be on the radio. It wasn't long before she was a hit in Detroit.

When a traveling musical came to town, they needed a background singer and understudy. She was a natural for the position. When the show left town, so did she. Thus started a long, successful career of singing and dancing on Broadway in New York. In her spare time, she continued to model for Macy's.

At 60 years of age, she decided to leave the big city lights behind. Along with her brother, she purchased a farm in a small town north of Detroit. Together, they bread and raised Thoroughbred  horses for racing.

When her brother fell ill and had to be moved to a nursing facility, she saw the need for better health care for the elderly and donated millions to the cause.

At eighty seven, she herself needed assistance and moved to the facility that she built originally for her brother. Finally, at ninety years young she's left us. Fourteen people came to her funeral and she died fairly anonymously.

It's sad that someone who was so popular and did so much with her life, could end up alone with only a few employees to see her off. Time had taken what little family she had and most all of her friends.

It was your average Catholic service. Done by the text book without much indication even to who the service was for. That is, until the communion. While those in attendance came forward to receive the gifts of the body and blood of Christ, our guest of honor had requested that the organist play her favorite song that she had sung in the halls of the nursing home and on a New York stage so many years ago. The organist played "Glory of Love".

One by one, everyone started to sing the song without prompting. By the end, we were all singing and there wasn't a dry eye in the church.

It doesn't matter how many people attend your funeral. As long as those who do, know that you loved them.
Have you told your loved ones how much you care lately?


2 comments:

John Going Gently said...

the problem that when you get really old.......(and I mean really OLD) many of your peers have already gone before you....
having said this. when auntie gladys from the village here ( who is 93) finally goes...her funeral will be the biggest and best EVER....

being loved no matter if it is by few or many is what really matters eh?

betty said...

what a touching story, Stew! It seems like she tried to do well with what she had to work with in her life, and I'm sure her legacy will live on for a long time, regardless of the low numbers that attended her funeral.

betty