| CONTENTS Introduction
WTH = W. Thomas Huyck CM = Christopher Moore |
25 - Adlai Stevenson Funeral 1965WTH: Let's go back to the summer of 1965 and pick up a couple of events that were written about here -- the choir appeared with the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia in Carmina Burana, and you ended up singing at a funeral service in Bloomington that summer. CM: In the spring, in the midst of preparations for the Tulsa trip, we were contacted by the Unitarian Church in Bloomington, Illinois because they had a children's choir group that was going to come to Chicago for a day or two, and they arranged with us to spend Sunday morning with us, and we arranged a special, longer than usual meeting early kind of rehearsal that would let them spend some time with us singing so that we could sing for them, but together as well. In the midst of that experience, I did a kind of drill for a few moments that let me share with them how our individual voices sounded, and then I went right through their group, and I found that a couple of kids were really impressive. After the fact, I found out these were the two sons of the Unitarian minister in Bloomington, Robert Reid. But I asked right then and there, "What are you doing this summer? Are you around home? I've got an idea. Let's see if we can work it out. We're going to be singing with the Chicago Symphony the kind of a song that you could learn alone. If you're game and if your parents are willing, why don't you take this music, learn it and we'll arrange for you to come back up here and spend a few days with one of our families so that you can be in on the last couple of rehearsals that we have and the rehearsals with Ozawa at Ravinia and sing in the performance." Now right about the time that this was in fact happening that summer, Gov. Adlai Stevenson died. And Bloomington was his home town and the Unitarian Church of Bloomington was his home church. So there were observances in Washington, DC and a major service at the Washington Cathedral, but at a certain point the body came back to Bloomington, and the family was planning quiet, somewhat private rites for the family and friends there at the Bloomington church with Robert Reid in charge. I talked to Bob in the midst of making the arrangements for his kids to be with us for that Ravinia weekend and said, if it seems appropriate, let the family know that we would be pleased to sing. Here are some of the kinds of the things we could sing -- a little Dona Nobis Pacem round and I've forgotten what else. We would be pleased to arrange to be there. Bob had been saying, "I wish there could be something musical." In fact, he sought my advice on musical alternatives, and I said, well, you know, if the family were game, we could probably organize a car caravan, come down and do this. The family thought about it and sent word back, "We would be pleased to have you join us." The service, at that point, was, of course, still conceived as a final observance for the family and close friends. On Sunday evening when we said good-bye to the Reid boys and they headed home with the funeral service being prospectively Monday morning, the very next morning...we got word at the same time that President Johnson had notified the family that he wished to be there. So as we went to bed that evening, we realized that suddenly this thing had changed from being a quiet family observance witnessed at a distance by the national community to a much more public occasion, albeit in a relatively tiny church sanctuary, because the President flew in with the Vice President, the members of the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, and this became a State occasion. And the result was that we had a police escort for the final run into the church. We met at something like 6:30 in the morning at Stateway Gardens down there at 35th Street because our commuter squad was singing, they were all going, and so we met down there on the parking lot of Stateway Gardens at 35th and Federal, got in our cars, and then, of course, proceeded out the Stevenson and down to Bloomington. WTH: Did the President like your singing? CM: Well, [Vice-President] Hubert Humphrey was especially appreciative. Hubert was the person who was shaking hands with various kids and the response was very good, and Mrs. Tree, who is related to Adlai Stevenson, was commenting on how moving she found the singing of the Choir. She'd been at the National Cathedral service, and felt that we provided our own kind of elegance. The other lovely story from that morning came from an incident during our rehearsal preparations downstairs from the church. We got there and we needed to warm up and get in voice and do various things. At the same time, the church had been open for some hours and there was a steady procession of people paying their last respects, and at a certain point the members of the choir were allowed to do this and were inserted in the line toward the last moments to file by if they wished. But that meant we weren't going to do anything in the actual space we were going to be performing in until the moment came, and so we were working downstairs. There were people sort of crowding to the outside of the church (Nowadays, Secret Service wouldn't let them get that close, but as long as they weren't blocking the entrances -- the entrances were cordoned off and secret servicemen and policemen were everywhere in terms of the route the President was going to take, but they weren't defending the other parts of the building) and these women kind of peeked through this window into our basement room and one said to the other, "Oh look, the United Nations must have sent these children." |