CHANTICLEER at Elizabeth Rich Bell's Memorial Service ~ 27 March 1999

My Mother, Elizabeth Rich Bell, died only three days before her 87th birthday in early March, 1999. I was able to be with her at the end, which truly was a blessing. An even more visible act of grace was Chanticleer’s singing the choral prelude before my Mother’s memorial service in my hometown, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The odds of that occurring were so remote that I hadn’t even contemplated it. After all, Chanticleer sings all over the world. And in the two weeks before my Mother’s service, the group sang in Mexico, Texas, Florida and Connecticut.

Completely by chance, I discovered that Chanticleer was to sing a concert only fifteen miles from Harrisburg the night before my Mother’s service. That was after calling the organist at Grace United Methodist Church to arrange a rehearsal for the afternoon before the service. When I was twelve years old my Mother made me promise to sing at her funeral. That’s a heavy burden to place upon a twelve-year old; but I intended to honor her request as best I could. Ron Sider mentioned in passing that he couldn’t rehearse too late on Friday afternoon because he was hosting a party for Chanticleer that night after their concert at Messiah College, where he was a professor.

Immediately I began to consider the possibilities. First I called Andrew Morgan, who sang with me in the Schola Cantorum at the Shrine of Saint Francis here in San Francisco. Since Andrew worked at the Chanticleer office, I figured he might know the tour schedule. From home late on a Friday night he didn’t recall the exact flight information; but gave me Frank Albinder’s e-mail address. Oh, the miracle of modern technology. Saturday morning the week before the service I e-mailed Frank, who responded within minutes. He wrote me that he had passed my message on to artistic administrator, Philip Wilder, and Lori Harnes, tour manager. But he cautioned that time constraints would be extremely difficult.

On Monday morning Julie in the Chanticleer office was kind enough to give me the phone number of the motel where the group was staying in Hartford, Connecticut. I must have called the motel at least thirty times trying to reach Philip or Lori. As a good tour manager, Lori was making arrangements by phone. I even became friends with the woman at the front desk, after being assured I wasn’t becoming a pest. Eventually I got through and explained to Lori that I realized it would be logistically tight with an 11:00 service and a 12:25 flight about a half hour away from the church. But it wouldn’t be necessary for the group to stay for the entire service. Chanticleer could sing before the service as part of the prelude. Lori said she would talk to the guys and that a decision would be made by vote at their business meeting. And she would give me a call later that night after their concert.

Meanwhile I was completing the final draft for the order of service to be printed here with the expert assistance of my friend, Deborah Sweeney. I was beginning to think it wouldn’t work out. But at 10:30 Monday evening (which was 1:30 AM in Hartford) Lori called me at home to say the group had agreed to sing.

I reserved five parking meters especially for Chanticleer in front of the church. Full dress wouldn’t be appropriate for late morning anyway, so the guys wore dressy casual clothes as they would to a school. Despite their dress, I suggested they sing in front. But several of them asked to sing upstairs in the rear gallery. That was a wonderful idea.

Following a Brahms chorale prelude “Herzliebster Jesu” -- at exactly seven minutes to the hour-- from the rear balcony of Grace Church below a marvelous Tiffany window of the Ascension, Chanticleer sang Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria.”

Then quietly--unobtrusively--they descended the back steps and drove to Harrisburg/ Middletown Airport in view of Three Mile Island and made their return flight to San Francisco.

I had meditated during the Biebl by trying to control my breathing. Under even ordinary circumstances, tears well up in me at the beginning of the "Sancta Maria." I did my best to compartmentalize; for I had to sing in just a few minutes. Cynthia played “Meditation” by Massenet on her violin as Mother had requested. Then after two psalms read by my niece Morgan and nephew Matthew, I sang Gounod’s “Repentance” as Mother had made me promise when I was twelve. I got through the recitative. But when I started the main theme “Oh, Divine Redeemer,” I began to sound like Alfalfa in “The Little Rascals.” I didn’t stop singing. But there was a quiver in my voice I had never experienced before.

Chanticleer had sung the Biebl at Louis Botto’s funeral service at St. Dominic’s. That was a powerfully emotional occasion--only days before Louis’ birthday. Joseph Jennings demonstrated then what I experienced internally at my Mother’s service.

When Chanticleer undertook its second national tour, we sang at the Forum in Harrisburg. Afterwards my parents had a reception for us and Mother baked a surprise hazelnut cake for Louis’ 31st birthday on March 3, 1982.

My family and I will always be grateful to Chanticleer for playing such a significant part at my Mother’s memorial service.

ELIZABETH RICH & SHERIDAN WATSON BELL, JR. ~ September 1, 1937 ~ 77th Anniversary!

My Mother and Dad met by accident. It was Leap Year 1936. Mother was in her final year at Yale School of Nursing. She had wanted to be a medical doctor; but her Father had insisted she earn a nursing degree first. That, of course, was a mistake. It’s a fork in the road. Once you’re a nurse, you don’t become a doctor: it’s like the chasm between workers and management. And Mother had gone away to boarding school at the age of twelve. By then she was tired of school. I don’t think Mother ever intended to get married. She was a real MHT – Mount Holyoke Type. They were among the first women libbers.

Mother had originally wanted to go to Wellesley, and was accepted. But one of her friends at National Cathedral School, where she took a year’s post-grad after Dickinson Seminary, had had her heart set on Wellesley and was on the waiting list. So Mother turned Wellesley down. Her friend was accepted. Mother hoped that her sacrifice had played a part. Her friend never knew. This story played a part in my psyche and own saga with Stan and the Whiffs. In my case, it was a futile gesture, since Stan had already been selected to be tapped. But I hadn’t known. (See my post on 9/29/08.)

Anyway back to 1936. Mother’s roommate asked her to join her on a double date with two Divinity students. Mother really wasn’t interested. Her roommate persisted and persuaded her to go since the younger Divinity student was engaged. Mother had first choice. By selecting the already engaged, younger man, presumably she’d never see him again. Dad had worked a few years as a social worker in Boston before finally deciding to become a minister. And even at the end of his life, at 73, Sherry had something of a baby face. Dad’s classmate had a moustache, which made him look older. So Mother mistakenly chose the younger looking man, who was not engaged.

Elizabeth and Sheridan really didn’t know each other. When they were married on September 1, 1937, they had spent less than an entire week together. And they hadn’t written very often. Mother graduated from Yale School of Nursing in 1936. She taught Chemistry at National Cathedral School in Washington the following year, while Dad finished up his studies at Yale Divinity School.

According to Dad, Mother called the shots. She wrote him to determine his intentions. Perhaps her Father was exerting some pressure for her to get married. They agreed to meet half way in New York City. Dad said he got on the train in New Haven without knowing exactly what he was going to do. They met at the Hotel Pennsylvania. He proposed and she accepted. But they still didn’t know each other.

In many ways Elizabeth was a catch. Her Father was a successful businessman in the middle of the Great Depression and a Congressman to boot. It would clearly be an abuse of power today—perhaps, it wasn’t considered such then— but Grandfather Rich had three of his prospective sons-in-law investigated by the FBI; so if Sheridan W. Bell, Jr. had had any significant skeletons in his closet, they should have been uncovered then. Anyway, it was very useful for a Methodist minister to have a wife. (I later learned from Aunt Julie that Uncle Charlie had been exempted from the background check because his father had gone to Dickinson College, which Baba attended, but from which he did not graduate. Evidently Baba felt that the Dickinson connection was a good enough reference.)

Sherry visited Betty once in Washington. It was near the end of her year teaching Chemistry. Daddy said it was the messiest lab he had ever seen. That should have been a sign. After they had been married a few months, Grandma Da took Dad aside and quietly suggested that Elizabeth might need some help with housekeeping.

I understand that Grandfather Bell died within the year of my parents' wedding. So I suppose none of us at the Bell Reunion in 1994, besides Aunt Claora, had had the opportunity to get to know him well. Just before that reunion I heard a story from Mother, I think, about Grandfather Bell at my parents wedding in 1937. He was, of course, the Minister. On the day of the wedding he got up early and thought he would play a trick (or perhaps conduct a test) on one of my Mother’s relatives, who was helping to prepare the pre-wedding buffet. Grandfather Bell went to the back door and said he was a stranger in need of some food. Remember this was still the Great Depression. Mother’s Aunt said something like: " I can’t possibly help you. I’m having over a hundred people to breakfast this morning."

Can you imagine her chagrin when she went to the wedding and realized she had turned away the Minister and father of the groom! With today’s increasing tragedy of homelessness, it’s important to remember the saying of one tradition that you never know which stranger is an Angel. In words attributed to Christ: "If you do it to the least of these my brethren, you do it unto me." Enough pontificating! But it sounds as though Grandfather Bell had a terrific sense of humor. I know his son, my Dad, certainly did.

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Two years later on my parents' second wedding anniversary, Adolf Hitler began the invasion of Poland and ignited the Second World War.

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On this day in 1715, Louis XIV of France departed this life at the age of 77 after a reign of seventy-two years, three months and eighteen days, the longest documented reign of any European monarch to date.

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The wedding photo above was taken in front of Mother's home in Woolrich.

IBBY ITCH ~ March 11, 1912 ~ March 8, 1999

Elizabeth Rich was born the month before the sailing of the Titanic. She was the eldest of six (and four surviving) daughters. Had she been a man, I have no doubt she would have taken over the family business. (I find it ironic that the one sister, who hated the little village of Woolrich, ended up marrying a Harvard man, who eventually did run the company and had to live there, at least, part of the year.)

My Mother was known as Aunt Betty to Dad’s side of the family. At Holyoke she’d been Libby. For one of her graduations-- either at Mount Holyoke or Yale (or could it have been Dickinson Seminary?) -- she changed her name altogether. She had always wanted a middle name. She liked the name Virginia. But instead of adding a middle name, she just dropped the first. Her parents, looking in the program, wondered who was Virginia Rich and where was Elizabeth? To her grandchildren she was “Nai-Nai” in Mandarin from Sherry’s Taiwan days, or “Goggie,” her own Mother Julia’s sobriquet. In my twittier moments, I called her “Mater mei,” which I just realized sounds dangerously close to “Mother of God” (it’s only the Latin for “Mama mia.”)

But to most of her friends throughout her adult life in Pennsylvania, Mother was known as Ibby. In 1915, as a three year old, she was asked to introduce herself as Elizabeth Rich. She did the best that she could. Out came:“ Ibby Itch.”

At the end of her life she was Elizabeth again. I’m not convinced that was entirely her choice. But, after all, that was her name. She would have been 101 years old today!

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Mother with her parents and three younger sisters on the porch of their house in Woolrich, Pennsylvania.

An atypical photo of my Mother on the path leading from our cottage on Pine Island, Lake Winnepausaukee in New Hampshire taken more than fifty years ago. It captures a whimsical side of Mother... not always apparent.

ELIZABETH RICH BELL ~ New Life ~ March 8,1999

My Mother, Ibby Bell, moved to Newville, Pennsylvania in 1989. Greenridge Village has many educated, traveled, interesting and friendly residents. Mother fit in and enjoyed their companionship and her own independence. The first eight or nine, were really good years. Her cottage at 31 Cedar Circle was charming. It had more room than my flat in San Francisco. What a luxury --- with two car garage, plenty of closets ---even an attic. I had to take a month’s leave from work at Neiman-Marcus to help Julie and Mother make the move. Lots of people helped; but Julie laid the groundwork. It was a special time to share with Mother. Moving from the old house was, I think, the most physical labor I’ve ever done. It was fun to set up her new place, to make the final decisions about what went where, which rugs to use, which pictures to hang, and so forth.

We hadn’t realized until the flood of Hurricane Agnes how much china and silver Mother actually had. Most of that went with her to Greenridge Village. In January 1997, we four children spent a week with Mother to distribute her possessions, when she moved to assisted living. She had already made the move; but kept the cottage two more months to allow all of us to be there. I think it was difficult for her to give up her things; but it was gratifying that she was able to make or, at minimum, approve the decisions.

The last six months were very hard for Mother. Julie agonized over the move to extended care. In order to delay it, we made arrangements for Mother to stay in her room at assisted living by having three shifts of companions around the clock. Eventually, even that was not satisfactory. When Mother made her final move, she misinterpreted the change and thought that care was being taken away, rather than extended. In reality, it partly was. Her isolation seemed more complete.

Even so, some of the old spark remained. Near the end, Mother laughed to herself and said it was just like the Lion and the Wolf. Cynthia called me from Florida to ask if I knew the reference. I said it sounded like an Aesop’s Fable. I looked around and found a book Sherry had given me on Fables of La Fontaine with illustrations by Dore.

Within its pages was Mother’s fable of The Lion, the Wolf and the Fox: “A Lion, sickly, weak, and full of years,/Desired a remedy against old age.” Ibby no doubt remembered it from the French!

Mother was a complex, conscientious, dogmatic, frightened, dedicated, stubborn, scholarly, rigid, vulnerable, disorganized, sentimental, opinionated, righteous, wry, considerate, determined, isolated, judgmental, courteous, timid, strong-willed, brittle, self-effacing, kind, inquisitive, lonely, sincere, intellectual, controlling, wealthy, stingy, principled, absolutist, thrifty, extraordinarily generous, manipulative, frustrating, shy, artistic, tender, tyrannical, talented, sweet, sporting, maddening, delicate, decorous, idiosyncratic, diligent, loving and supportive woman. To the end she was a fighter.

Above all, Ibby was a golfer.

Mother departed this life at 1:28 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on March 8, 1999 --only three days before her 87th birthday. At her side were her eldest and youngest children. She died holding a #10 iron, her favorite putter. All four of her children spent the last two full days with her and slept on the floor of her room that final night.

Earlier we read our own verses from a poem Mother had written about us children back in 1951 when Julie was twelve, Sherry nine, Cynthia four, and I was two. Each verse began: “I love you Mother....”

Cynthia played Massenet’s Meditation from the opera Thais, as Mother had requested for her to do at her memorial service. That was a piece Cynthia had studied with her teacher Mr. Malsh. And years ago Mother made me promise that I would sing the aria Gounod’s Repentance (O, Divine Redeemer). That was difficult for me to get through, but I did my best. Mother had selected that anthem when she was very close to death with pneumonia as a sixteen year old. Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary then and Mother lived another full and vibrant seventy years. Cynthia played and I sang at the principal memorial service at Grace Church in Harrisburg on Saturday March 27, 1999. That allowed time for relatives from out of state and others out of the country to attend. Afterwards we went to Woolrich to bury a lock of her hair.

As a nurse, Mother donated her body for research at the Hershey Medical Center. We reclaimed her ashes a year later for internment at the plot in Woolrich.

On the morning after her death, we had a brief witness to the resurrection celebration for Mother in the garden court at Greeenridge Village for all her helpers and the many friends she had made there.

For most of Mother’s life, she was rather isolated and estranged because of her hearing problems. She was always busy with her hands -- with needle-point, knitting, drawing, sewing, cooking, and, of course, golf. (She never was much of a gardener, though. She never learned how to prune.) Mother was very active in church and civic volunteer organizations. She had many acquaintances and colleagues, but very few real friends. Her hearing isolation and her own eccentricities contributed to her loneliness. (And during the final years she was legally blind.)

But Mother spent the last ten years of her life at Greenridge Village, where her natural and cultured idiosyncracies evolved into delightful old age charm. She fit right in and developed many deep and authentic friendships-- in some ways, really for the first time in her life. She was truly loved.

SHERRY & IBBY ~ LEAP YEAR 1936

My Mother and Dad met by accident. It was Leap Year 1936. Mother was in her final year at Yale School of Nursing. She had wanted to be a medical doctor; but her Father had insisted she earn a nursing degree first. That, of course, was a mistake. It’s a fork in the road. Once you’re a nurse, you don’t become a doctor: it’s like the chasm between workers and management. And Mother had gone away to boarding school at the age of twelve. By then she was tired of school. I don’t think Mother ever intended to get married. She was a real MHT – Mount Holyoke Type. They were among the first women libbers.

Mother had originally wanted to go to Wellesley, and was accepted. But one of her friends at National Cathedral School, where she took a year’s post-grad after Dickinson Seminary, had had her heart set on Wellesley and was on the waiting list. So Mother turned Wellesley down. Her friend was accepted. Mother hoped that her sacrifice had played a part. Her friend never knew. This story played a part in my psyche and own saga with Stan and the Whiffs. In my case, it was a futile gesture, since Stan had already been selected to be tapped. But I hadn’t known.

Anyway back to 1936. Mother’s roommate asked her to join her on a double date with two Divinity students. Mother really wasn’t interested. Her roommate persisted and persuaded her to go since the younger Divinity student was engaged. Mother had first choice. By selecting the already engaged, younger man, presumably she’d never see him again. Dad had worked a few years as a social worker in Boston before finally deciding to become a minister. And even at the end of his life, at 73, Sherry had something of a baby face. Dad’s classmate had a moustache, which made him look older. So Mother mistakenly chose the younger looking man, who was not engaged.

Elizabeth and Sheridan really didn’t know each other. When they were married on September 1, 1937, they had spent less than an entire week together. And they hadn’t written very often. Mother graduated from Yale School of Nursing in 1936. She taught Chemistry at National Cathedral School in Washington the following year, while Dad finished up his studies at Yale Divinity School.

According to Dad, Mother called the shots. She wrote him to determine his intentions. Perhaps her Father was exerting some pressure for her to get married. They agreed to meet half way in New York City. Dad said he got on the train in New Haven without knowing exactly what he was going to do. They met at the Hotel Pennsylvania. He proposed and she accepted. But they still didn’t know each other.

In many ways Elizabeth was a catch. Her Father was a successful businessman in the middle of the Great Depression and a Congressman to boot. It would clearly be an abuse of power today—perhaps, it wasn’t considered such then— but Grandfather Rich had three of his prospective sons-in-law investigated by the FBI; so if Sheridan W. Bell, Jr. had had any significant skeletons in his closet, they should have been uncovered then. Anyway, it was very useful for a Methodist minister to have a wife. (I later learned from Aunt Julie that Uncle Charlie had been exempted from the background check because his father had gone to Dickinson College, which Baba attended, but from which he did not graduate. Evidently Baba felt that the Dickinson connection was a good enough reference.

Sherry visited Betty once in Washington. It was near the end of her year teaching Chemistry. Daddy said it was the messiest lab he had ever seen. That should have been a sign. After they had been married a few months, Grandma Da took Dad aside and quietly suggested that Elizabeth might need some help with housekeeping.

I understand that Grandfather Bell died within the year of my parents wedding. So I suppose none of us at the Bell Reunion in 1994, besides Aunt Claora, had had the opportunity to get to know him well. Just before that reunion I heard a story from Mother, I think, about Grandfather Bell at my parents wedding in 1937. He was, of course, the Minister. On the day of the wedding he got up early and thought he would play a trick (or perhaps conduct a test) on one of my Mother’s relatives, who was helping to prepare the pre-wedding buffet. Grandfather Bell went to the back door and said he was a stranger in need of some food. Remember this was still the Great Depression. Mother’s Aunt said something like: " I can’t possibly help you. I’m having over a hundred people to breakfast this morning."

Can you imagine her chagrin when she went to the wedding and realized she had turned away the Minister and father of the groom! With today’s increasing tragedy of homelessness, it’s important to remember the saying of one tradition that you never know which stranger is an Angel. In words attributed to Christ: "If you do it to the least of these my brethren, you do it unto me." Enough pontificating! But it sounds as though Grandfather Bell had a terrific sense of humor. I know his son, my Dad, certainly did.