1. Excuse us please, Miss Dickey and friends in the audience. Your ears are not playing tricks on you we are. The discords you just heard are voices from the past.

2. The voices of a group of girls ten years ago, before. Miss Dickey formed the "Namegua Lodge Girls Choir" and put harmony into their lives.

3. It was not an easy undertaking to train vocal cords, that up until that time, had used their talent calling outs and strikes on a baseball diamond.

4. Except for three of four exceptions, there were fifteen more who had never heard of three part singing. Note reading could have been a foreign language.

5. Yet, she came each week and worked with them. Form here they practiced and sang as a chorus. Her enthusiasm was contagious. Under her guidance, singing was fun.

6. She not only gave them a worthwhile pastime, but a truer appreciation of good music. What they learned in their hours together would always be of value.

7. Maybe every voice was not a Marion Anderson. She had little choice with a group this size. Not as in a larger school where the best could be selected. In order to have a choir at all, each girl had to participate.

8. Never knowing when one of her pupils might leave or a new member must be made to feel at home in the group, she kept on. Soon her efforts brought requests from local groups to hear the girls sing.

9. If at all times we and those before us do not sound like Fred Wearings Chorus, it is no her fault! Giving freely of her own time and without reward she directed and rehearsed with her limited resources for then years no, and we want her know we truly than her for the music she put into our lives.

10. Her past students have not forgotten her. One such girl remembers tears in the eyes of one audience at Christmas time. When even if we did not sound exactly like angles, there was one directing us.

11. There would have been no musical accomplishment without our accompaniest [sic] either. Mrs Salsberry please know we are endebted [sic] to you. For the last five years she has generously given of herself and time to play for us.

12. Both these dear ladies have worked very hard for our benifit [sic]. And we not only thank them but their kind husbands for allowing us to share their wives Coming here, sometimes every day for the entire afternoon in preparation for a program where [???] and spending many of their evenings presenting them.

Everyone

13.

Mrs. Dickey thank you much for all the joy you've brought to us. Also Mrs. Salsberry We are most appreciative There's only one thing we want to do and thats [sic] to keep making music with you.

It is the first of many hand written and typed papers she left behind that I am committing to more permanent record. There is no significance to this one being first, it was chosen at random, merely because it was organized and placed in an manila envelope. It seems to lack any true force or meaning (I read it for the first time as I typed it), and could be an actual ode to real people given in some memorium. I perhaps should have scoured through the collection I have, for a better starting point in transcribing her life. There is even the possibility that these are not her words, since she did not sign or date this particular work (as she did with many other works). The envelope is unmarked as well, except for a barely visible, and poorly scratched "Mrs. Dickey" with a pen that obviously ran out of ink.

One other very minor note, there is a phone number in the upper right corner of the first page
755-1331
This would be a Moline or East Moline, Illinois number. It was an important number to Gail for some reason, but the reason is lost along with Gail long ago.

All in all, a tepid and poor beginning, in memorializing works languishing in a thick folder for over thirty years.

[ back to Gail's Poetry index ] [ back to Larry's Homepage ]