“Well, I bet you’re all wondering why your old Uncle Gerre brought you here today..."

Dr. Gerre Hancock (February 21, 1934 – January 21, 2012)
greets a church music improv class at Eastman

We all know people who changed the world as we know it because they were in it.  
I consider it an extraordinary gift to have been mentored by someone who changed the course of church music in this country by his talent and dedication – Dr. Gerre Hancock.  Today I remember dear Uncle Gerre, as we affectionately called him, whose Solemn Requiem is being celebrated at St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York City as I write.

I’m reminded of the first scene in the movie “The Iron Lady”: an older woman in a trench coat with a scarf covering her hair much like my grandmother covered hers maneuvers the busy streets of a crowded city into a little market store to buy milk at an ungodly price.  Just a normal person, seemingly no one of any consequence, being bumped around by impatient young people at the counter.  Of course that older woman isn’t just anyone, but the inimitable Lady Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minster of the United Kingdom.  

I’m also reminded of a concert by Dave Brubeck a few years ago at the Baldwin-Wallace College Bach Festival – yes, jazz at a Bach Festival!  Mr. Brubeck had to be helped out onto the stage  - it took FOREVER for him to get to the piano for the performance.  If one did not know the man, surely they would have thought the concert would be a snooze.  But when he put his hands on that keyboard, the world was set on fire.  

And now I imagine Uncle Gerre: an unassuming, “regular” looking, older gentleman walking the streets of New York City with a slightly uneven gait (as I remember him), making his way towards that big church on the corner.  No fancy clothes, no expensive briefcase.  But little did those around him know that underneath the graying hair of that kind-looking man was one of the most gifted, talented musical minds that ever walked the streets of New York.  That the hands and feet of “that older guy over there” were capable of incredible dexterity, imagination and genius beyond what most of us could even fathom.  

That was Uncle Gerre.  He was by no means as feeble as Mr. Brubeck or as forgetful as Lady Thatcher is portrayed in the movie above.  But his humility is one of the things that made him so great, such a giant of a human being.  A friend wrote to me that it was strange to think of the world without Uncle Gerre in it.  It is amazing the comfort we find in knowing that someone else is present in some other part of the world.  The world makes more sense with that assurance.  When we lose them we feel as if we have lost a part of ourselves but in truth, their presence never really leaves us.  Uncle Gerre will always live in the unseen and unheard music that floats through the nave of St. Thomas Church and in the many churches and concert halls he played in throughout the world, and through the talents and minds of his students, family, friends and admirers.  No one ever truly leaves us, and that is a comfort.  

Life can be so surprising.  We often miss the presence of greatness in our midst – sometimes because of humility, sometimes because we refuse to see it or cannot see it through our own pain and struggles.  I've lost more than my share of people for whom it is strange to think of the world without.  There are times when nothing in life seems to make much sense, and I wonder if, even at an early age, I chose music as a way of creating meaning where there was none.  In reality, I believe music chose me.  Music is, after all, a living, breathing entity that captures us with its imagination and holds those in its grip in whom it sees the ability to tell its story – those whose soul cannot bear to do anything else except make music.  To deny that vocation is to slowly kill the soul over a lifetime.  I don’t think music can fill the big, empty holes that are created in the world when we lose the ones we love, but it can be a catalyst for the healing process needed for those holes to be slowly knit back together.  And  the love and support of our family and friends creates shadows around those holes so that they don't seem quite so big.  Love, in the end, does indeed conquer all.  

Peace to everyone today, and never lose an opportunity to tell the ones close to you how much you love them.  

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven,

to enter into that gate and dwell in that house,

where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light;

no noise nor silence, but one equal music;

no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession;

no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity;

in the habitation of thy glory and dominion,

world without end. Amen.      
John Donne