Thanksgiving Journal, Day 5

Will I ever run out of blessings for which I am grateful? I don't think so. My heart literally is filled to overflowing these days. It is the 95th anniversary of my Mother's birth today. I pay tribute and #givethanks for Helen Lee Goates today. She continues to inspire me every day, but especially this time of year whenever Thanksgiving rolls around. Her birthday often fell on this day, as it did the last year she was with us in 1999. She was a violinist and a vocalist. Thoughts of her lead me to my love of music.

I've been pondering this morning that one of the greatest gifts for which I am grateful is the gift of music. 

My love of music began around the age of 8, when my father introduced me to the piano. Grandfather Lesley Goates had purchased a baby grand piano for their small home in Sugarhouse when my father was a child. It nearly didn't fit into the front room of that home. No one played the piano, but Grandpa Goates was a gifted vocalist who led many choirs during his life, and was eager to introduce his fledgling son, Brent, to the beauties of music. I learned on that piano and #givethanks for the memory of that instrument that I had refinished when it found a place in our living room many years later. I am thankful my father persisted with me as long as he did with early morning wake-up calls to practice.

I had two great pianists who I loved to listen to in concert - Grant Johanneson (local Salt Lake City boy) and Van Cliburn. They were each at the pinnacle of their professional careers as concert pianists when I heard them play as soloists with the Utah Symphony in the Tabernacle before Abravanel Hall was built across the street from Temple Square. It was these two who first introduced me to the spectacular concert "workhorse," Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. I am grateful for their musical prowess that always uplifted me.

I #givethanks for Cherry Brown and Charlene Snow, my two piano teachers in the Federal Heights Ward, who labored diligently to teach me the intricacies of the keyboard, harmony and music theory. I never rose to the heights of extraordinary proficiency, but I was adequate enough to accompany the congregational singing in every town where I served in England during my mission. 

At East High School in Salt Lake City, I was further tutored in vocal ensembles under the tutelage of Lorraine Bowman. I sang in her A cappella Choir, Madrigals and the Boys Quartet. Those were days never to be forgotten during our senior year. I was the bass in the quartet comprised of Mark Ethington, Steve Spencer, Doug Richards and me. I #givethanks today for those lifelong friendships. Especially during the Christmas season, those memories were made to last a lifetime because of the influence of music well prepared, well sung and long remembered.

After being tutored by Cherry and Charlene on the piano, I began to branch out and buy my own sheet music, which I loved to play for many years later. My children remember being accompanied to sleep each night with strains of "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," from "My Fair Lady."

Speaking of that musical reminds me to #givethanks for my Nana Fern Lucinda Tanner Lee, who loved to play the original soundtrack recording from the Broadway production in New York. She and Grandfather Harold B. Lee had attended the production and still had the original playbill on their shelf. When I would stay with her on the weekends when Grandfather Lee was traveling for stake conference assignments, she would put the record on their large Magnavox stereo console and let me listen to it again and again as she described the action on stage. She introduced me to the theater of the mind. I would pick a spot on the plush white carpet in front of the stereo so the sound from the left speakers was evenly balanced with the sound from the right speakers. It was heavenly, and I was so familiar with the music that I managed to memorize every word of the lyrics. 

The original production featured Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. Nana was always a little nervous when Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins introduced his song about Eliza Doolittle with the expletive "Damn, Damn, Damn, Damn, I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face." The expletives were about his reluctant admission that he was falling in love, somewhat surprisingly and unwillingly. Knowing it was coming in the soundtrack, she would time her entrance into the room to turn down the volume when that part came up. She didn't want me tainted at such an impressionable age. 

Little could she have known when I entered the Army for basic training that I would hear much worse than that! I had drill sergeants who were skilled in the multifaceted uses of one particular four-letter word which was used interchangeably as a noun, a verb, a preposition, an adjective, and a gerund. Those who have been in the Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy or Coast Guard will tell you exactly the word to which I refer.

That formative introduction to Broadway musicals came from Nana. I would go on to collect the soundtracks of virtually all the productions, and had the chance to see many of them in person. I am so grateful for the uplifting inspiration they often provided. 

But if we're going to talk about inspirational music, how could I do any better than the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square? Since Mack Wilberg took the reins of the Choir and the Orchestra, they have soared to the highest heights. His arrangements will live on forever. I #givethanks for a heavenly choir here on Earth that was recently named as one of the top ten choirs in the world.

Perhaps tomorrow I will single out some specific arrangements for which I am particularly grateful, but I will conclude today's post to #givethanks for music and its influence in my life.

 

Sleepovers with Nana

Growing up, I was routinely asked by others outside the family, "What's it like to be the grandson of Harold B. Lee?" Now it is my children and grandchildren who are asking. Today's post is another installment in partial answer to their questions.


Fern Lucinda Tanner Lee

 When I was a young boy around the age of eight, I often went to stay with our “Nana” on weekends. Grandfather Lee was routinely away from home on stake conference assignments and mission tours, and Nana remained home alone most of the time. "Nana" was our name for Fern Lucinda Tanner Lee. She was a small and very petite (almost fragile) woman. I wasn't very old when I could look her straight in the eye, then most of her grandsons passed her in height and she started calling us her "big boys." We all loved her very much.

Nana had two daughters, and she was delighted as the grandsons were born because boys in that family were a rarity. Five grandsons later, she finally got two granddaughters, Martsy and Jane, then three more grandsons followed. We were a very close family -- cousins were more like brothers and sisters.

I was her oldest grandson. At some point, Nana and Mom conjured up the idea of having her "big boy" David come to stay with her on weekends to keep her company. These were long weekends. Jet travel had barely been introduced. The General Authorities often left home on Friday to travel by train or car to their stake conferences which were held over two days – all day Saturday (two sessions, morning and afternoon) and all day Sunday (two more sessions). Often they travelled home on Mondays, so they were gone for four days out of the week.

Mom would drop me off at her home, 847 Connor Street in Salt Lake City, usually on a Friday night after school. We would settle in for the night after she made dinner. She was a marvelous cook. I learned early and often just how skilled she was, and it was apparent where my mother had learned her homemaking skills.

In those days, television was in its infancy and it was still in black and white. Her very favorite TV show was “Perry Mason,” a series about a defense attorney and the stories about his clients. There was a very hard-nosed police detective named Lt. Tragg, who was always gathering evidence against Perry’s clients so they could be prosecuted in court. The District Attorney was Hamilton Burger. Mason was always matching wits against both. He had Della Street, his secretary, and Paul Drake, a private investigator, on his side. They made quite a team as they matched wits each week with Tragg and Burger. They would investigate the facts, Mason’s client was accused and charged with a crime, more investigations would continue. Then the trial would begin and in the climactic courtroom scene Perry Mason would introduce new evidence and often get a courtroom confession from the real lawbreaker who was never Mason’s innocent client.

Nana loved it. I think she loved it so much because the “good guys” always won. She loved the innocent person being let free at the end. What you always knew is that Perry Mason’s client was never the guilty party. All that remained was to discover how he or she would be proven innocent. She often guessed the plot in advance, and would tell me who the real guilty person was going to be. She was seldom wrong. I used to think she was brilliant, and wondered why she hadn’t been an attorney.

“Dragnet,” a police drama, was also a favorite. Nana would finish her Friday evenings by watching the variety shows that included song, dance and skits. They were very popular and she loved several performers. I especially remember that Diana Shore, Andy Williams, Perry Como, Red Skelton, Sid Caesar and Milton Berle were among them. She also liked “I Love Lucy” with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. It was called “The Golden Age of Television.”

The stars of Dragnet were Jack Webb and Harry Morgan (long before he achieved fame in M*A*S*H as Colonel Sherman T. Potter). If Nana had lived long enough, she would have been hailed as a prophetess. She told me as a young boy, observing all the smoking on television, that people could die by smoking cigarettes. Jack Webb later died of lung cancer.

Her TV was a good companion when Grandfather was gone. TV was much more innocent and fun than it is today. But I remember her moaning with disdain over Fatima Cigarette commercials (the sponsor of Dragnet) before they were banned from TV. She asked aloud, "How could anyone think smoking cigarettes is attractive?" She saw it as a filthy disgusting habit, and she embedded a dislike for the products in me as a young lad so the temptation was never appealing to me.

She would tuck me into bed down the hall from her bedroom by reading me stories just as my mother did in our home. Then we would kneel down together and we would take turns praying together. I loved to hear her pray. Her prayers were to a Father with whom she was on intimate and familiar terms.

The next morning she would always be up before me making breakfast. She called it a “big boy breakfast,” and it included EVERYTHING: pancakes or French toast, toast with peanut butter and jam or honey, eggs cooked any way I wanted (scrambled or “sunny side up or down”) and orange juice or apple juice and milk or hot chocolate if it was winter. Sometimes she would even cook oatmeal or put out cold cereal I liked. Grandfather suffered from ulcers much of his adult life, so fixing "stuff" for her big boys was particulary exciting for her, since Grandfather's diet was often restricted to milk toast and soft foods that didn't irritate his ulcers. At an early age I associated ulcers with stress and pressure -- that's how they always explained Grandfather's ailment.


President Harold B. Lee

While we're on that topic of food, I am often amused when I read in books what the favorite foods of the Presidents of the Church were. I have no doubt about Harold B. Lee's favorites: milk toast, apple pie a la mode (with vanilla ice cream), and a slice of sharp cheddar cheese. Favorite fruit -- apples, of course.

During the winter after breakfast, I would go outside and shovel the driveway and the sidewalks. In the summer I mowed the lawn and raked leaves in the fall. They had stately elm trees in the backyard and the leaves were gigantic, easy to rake and gather up into the compost pile Grandfather would use for mulch in the spring. That pile always smelled bad as it decomposed, but Grandfather loved it when he could spread it around his rose garden in the spring. His roses were planted in two rows with a decorative pedestal holding a round shiny blue ball anchored by a piece of rebar so it wouldn't fall off. I often helped him prune the roses, and he taught me that cutting them back every year assured more robust blooms. She was very particular about how I did all the yardwork, knowing how important a well-kept yard was to Grandfather. She always made sure I did it her way.


Newlyweds, first home

 One year, she and Grandfather had been to New York City together while he attended board meetings. They attended the opening run of “My Fair Lady” on Broadway, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. They came home with the original playbill (program) and a stereo 33 1/3 RPM record of the soundtrack. (You younger folks may be forgiven for not even knowning what that has reference to). They had recently purchased a large (probably six feet wide for good speaker separation) stereo console. It's an antique now, but they were delighted with the sound it produced, a quantum leap up from radio. Grandfather would instruct me where to sit in front of it to get the full stereo effect. Dad found that old playbill among Nana's treasures in her cedar chest recently, and knowing of the special connection with it I had shared with Nana, sent it along to me as a loving memento.

She would play that record on their stereo in their living room night after night. At one point it was the ONLY stereo record they owned, and she loved it. She warned me in advance to cover my ears when Rex Harrison blasted out his, "Damn, damn, damn, damn" in the introduction to "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face." She did not want me to be tainted by the "bad words." And yes, our mouths were washed out with soap if we ever repeated them. I would listen to it with her, and often fell asleep on their plush white carpet in front of the stereo with a pillow and blanket. I learned every song and every word because I heard it so frequently. I don’t ever remember hearing her play any other record, though I am certain they eventually must have added to their collection.

Those were magical years for me as a little boy growing up. She loved us all, but I always knew I was her favorite. As my brothers and cousins grew older, they often came with me, or got their own turn to stay with her. And then I learned the sad reality -- they all thought THEY were her favorite too. The reason this was so important to her was that Grandfather’s work as an Apostle took him out of town so often and she welcomed the company on weekends when he was gone.

I still remember his description of jets when they were first introduced. He said it was like “hedge hopping.” He described the airplanes taking off in a much steeper angle, almost “straight up” it seemed to him, then by the time they reached their cruising altitude it seemed like they were coming back down because it was so much faster than train and car travel. He believed jet travel was the most incredible advancement to the work of the Lord in the last days because it meant the General Authorities could get to the people so much easier. Now, of course, we have so many other modern tools like the Internet and computers to broadcast conferences and keep the General Authorities closer to the people.

I couldn’t wait until the time when I turned sixteen so I could drive Nana wherever she wanted to go on the weekends. She didn’t like to drive very much, and Grandfather left his white 1960 Buick Electra in the garage while he was gone most of the time. Favorite car:  Buick. Never owned anything else. He had a good friend who was a Buick dealer in Tooele and he was loyal. And yes, he liked the fins on that beauty!

Grandfather loved Nana very much. However, she died in 1962, when I was fifteen.  He was so sad when she died. I loved her very much too, and I missed our sleepovers when she was gone.