Easter Sunday and the 60-cent Trio Book

Beautiful Harmony  - No Matter How It Is Done

                As soon as my father arrived home from his rehabilitation stint following his first stroke in 2012, we began having what my mother refers to as “church.” It consists of reading a devotional, the accompanying Bible passage, a prayer, and singing two or three hymns. Until Dad’s second stroke in April of 2014, the three of us sang. Dad can no longer sing so Mother and I do the singing. Usually, she adds harmony. When Angie stays overnight, we sing three-part harmony.

                The last time Angie stayed and sang, she mentioned, “I sing harmony by note.” Just a day earlier, Mother had commented that she sang harmony by “feeling it.” Actually, Mother‘s experience and innate musical talent enable her to say this. Since I love singing harmony, these comments set me off on a search for some music for Angie to “read” and sing the next time she came to the farm overnight. I pulled a well-worn harmony book entitled Sacred Trios for Sopranos and Altos from the music shelves above my piano. Upon seeing it, my mother began reminiscing.

                Mother used that choral book first with girls in her Sunday School class at the Masham Baptist Church. I flipped to the song “Were You There?” which three of the girls had sung for Easter well over fifty years ago. Most of the young ladies in her Sunday School class sang in the Pawnee High School Glee Club. (These girls had more experience than the little elementary-age ones she had taught at Belford Grade School in the Big Bend community. See the blog post entitled at this link: https://bernadeanjgates.blogspot.com/2014/11/when-little-brown-eyed-durgan-lived.html)

The Masham Girls in the Early 1960s - Back Row - Linda Bright, Sue Schultz, Mary Jo Thurber,
Norma Nell Wheatley, and Frankie Wills. Front Row - Elaine Wills, Nancy Leforce, and Vickie
Wills. My mother took this on an Easter Sunday morning at the Masham Baptist Church.

                She reminded me that Peggy Barnes, Sue Shultz, and Norma Nell Wheatley came to our home to practice that Easter Sunday trio special.* Surprisingly,  I recall more succinctly a practice at the Masham Baptist Church. The close harmony of those teenage girls, who were my idols at the time, mesmerized me as a little preschooler sitting quietly in a pew by myself,

                My mother retains cherished memories of those girls in her Sunday School class over 50 years ago. Anytime she gets to visit with those women proves to be filled with joyful recollections as well as updates on their own children and grandchildren. Her heart goes out to them when they suffer illness or loss in their families. She grieved over several of the “girls” from her class who have already died.

                She hardly ever discusses the “Masham girls” without bringing up their present faithfulness in their churches. She may mention how they have raised their children according to the principles of God’s Word, reaping multiple benefits. One of her former students mentioned in her 2014 Christmas card of her husband’s serious health issues. Each evening we lift her and her husband up in prayer.

                One of my favorite verses is the last one in most versions of Were You There. The words prepare us perfectly for a genuine Easter celebration.

Were you there when He rose up from the dead?

Were you there when He rose up from the dead?

Oh! Sometimes I feel like shouting glory, glory, glory,

Were you there when He rose up from the dead?

                                                                                                                                                                                              Public Domain

                So many times I sing the third line with a memory of Dad. Frequently, Dad would come into the house to share a blessing he had experienced on the farm or we would share some good thing that had happened to us. Instantly, he would throw both hands in the air as though the Woodland Cougars had just scored, and exclaim, “Glory!” That’s how we should celebrate the resurrection of Jesus  - not just on Easter Sunday, but every day of the week. He alone is worthy of our praise and the beautiful harmony of lives lived for Him. That same sweet harmony can then permeate all our relationships to the glory of Him.

               

*A later trio of girls that sang in the Masham Baptist Church was composed of Nancy and Janie Leforce along with Linda Laird. 

The Trio Songbook published in 1945 and sold for $0.60.
My sister, Angie Gates Bradley, Barbara Rice, Sharon
Stewart,and I sang at least one song from this classic
treasury of trio arrangements for female voices. It remains
one of my favorite publications for a trio of voices.