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An Amazing Grace

Dedicated to the sunshine of truth,

the moonshine of meeting deadlines,

and the starshine of Victoria.

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The Victoria GAZETTE

Victoria’s Corner Bar.  Nightly Specials and Menus.  952-443-9944

by Sue Orsen

         I wrote a letter to the St. Victoria Choir and Staff and emailed it to them on Monday morning, December 28th, 2015.  Since the letter is a continuation of my longtime work that chronicles the history of Victoria and its people, I am including it here on the front pages of the Gazette for the New Year 2016.  Maybe you will agree that my story is an Amazing Grace.

***

         This is notice that after 34 years of being on a schedule for weekly choir practices and weekend Masses at St. Victoria, as well as being available for funerals and other events at church, I am quitting my music responsibilities, effective immediately.  It has been a phenomenal experience, an important part of my life, and an Amazing Grace.  I am quitting, all of it.  The time is right.  Tomorrow is my birthday, and this is a birthday present to myself so I better get it in the mail.

         With this significant decision, my thoughts go back to how this all began.  It began with four years of piano lessons from Sister Olive Louise at the St. Eloi Catholic School in Ghent, Minnesota.  My parents sacrificed to pay for those piano lessons.  I believe the charge in 1960 was $3.50 for a half hour lesson.  It was a lot of money at the time, when my parents didn’t have a lot of money. 

         After 34 years as the choir pianist and organist at St. Victoria, I can now play, or learn to play, most any piece of music that is set before me.  Amazing Grace!  You might say it’s been like getting 34 years of free piano lessons, but I can tell you that it wasn’t free.  I paid for those lessons in many ways.  Interesting, it is, that I’m quitting at the time I’ve become most “accomplished.”  Indeed, life is full of contradictions.

         For 34 years I’ve worked my life, and my family’s life, around weekly choir practice evenings and weekend Masses at St. Victoria.  The barrage of Easter and Christmas Masses occurred only twice a year but consumed much practice time for the choir, especially as more difficult music was chosen for concerts and special occasions.  My last piece with the choir was “The Hallelujah Chorus” on Christmas Eve, 2015.  We both did well. 

         Also, I have played for most all of the funeral Masses at St. Victoria these past 34 years.  I’ve said goodbye to many friends, including Germaine Jesberg, as they laid in a casket with a rosary folded around their hands.  The last funeral I played for, with only one day’s notice, involved much big music and was a gift to an unfamiliar family of a young child who died.

         My children Jenny and Nick were only 10 and 12 years old when I became the organist at St. Victoria in January of 1982.  I hated leaving the house and driving away from them for choir practice, especially on cold winter nights.  There wasn’t anyone else to help play at St. Victoria for a time, until Kathy Broberg arrived to alternate non-choir Masses with me.  Also, a guitar group formed and did one of the three weekend Masses.  But I am the one who always had the choir and choir practices.  It was my choice.  I’ve loved and enjoyed the choir.  It’s been an Amazing Grace.

         During these past 34 years, there have always been three weekend Masses at St. Victoria.  Sometimes in those early years of mine, I asked Ray Schmieg and Charlie Johnson to play their concertinas at Mass, which they did, and sometimes I got Julie Michel to play her trumpet.  Sometimes I got Chuck Schmidt to lead congregational hymns at the podium.  Sometimes I got Julianne Wartman and Darla Diethelm to do solo parts. 

         I was the Choir and Music Director as well as the organist for the first ten years.  I studied Mass readings for the upcoming Sunday, chose appropriate hymns, conducted the weekly choir practices, and met with the priest to go over things.  I planned, played, and directed music for the First Communions, Confirmations, Masses for High School Graduates, the annual Ecumenical Thanksgiving Services, and, as I said, the funerals.  The Rodgers organ I began playing 34 years ago is still in the choir loft of the old church.

 

“An Amazing Grace” appears in full in the paper edition of the Gazette.

January 2016