Out of Her Era (Remembering Debra II)

One of Deb's brothers has posted a photo of her on her memorial page, wearing a magnificent, flowered hat and a vintage dress with a bustle.  She smiles Gioconda-like, eyes bright.

I offer the comment in the list below Patrick's post that "Deb always said, she'd missed her era."

And I suppose she had.  Her lyric soprano voice was always more, it seemed, than auditioners cared to cast.  She was ever enthusiastically welcomed as one of the chorus but never as the ingenue, as the matron but never the lead.

The reality was a constant frustration to her, and it should have been. Though Debra's voice bore gravitas in every note she sang.

I recall one occasion, when she sang a fundraiser for a local church in Posey County, Indiana, where a friend of ours, who was a co-worker with us at the B. Dalton in Evansville, was a member. Deb presented a program of classical and sacred music, including arias of roles in which she longed to be cast - Tosca, Carmen - then a couple of Schubert Lieder, and finally American spirituals making it sound as if she was channeling Marian Anderson.

The audience had come, apparently expecting simple fare or an under-developed vocalist. They got neither. They were blown away. She sang two encores of L'amour est un oiseau rebelle from Carmen before they would let her step down.

Her friends and co-workers in choirs and choruses will undoubtedly bear witness to the reward of being in a more intimate audience with Debra. She loved best the joy of ensemble - singing together, performing to a responsive audience. It was the interaction she enjoyed. Not to say that she did not enjoy solo work, but that her best work was done when she could interact with the audience, sing to someone on the front row, flirt with another on the aisle.

The diva presence Debra could project when she either was first introduced to someone, or else when she considered or spoke of her craft, belied the intimacy with which she performed. Maybe casting agents and directors imagined that the intimacy would work against her in a grand setting.

Or maybe Deb really was out of her era.

Whatever the reason she found herself more often in the chorus or the choir, those of us who were able to work alongside her, or to delight in being her audience for those more intimate performances, will confess there will come no other personality like her soon.

Remembering Debra

On Wednesday afternoon the news came.  A colleague of mine in the Chicago area called to tell me that someone had died.

I'd just spent a delightful morning and afternoon with my daughter, taking down the decorations for Thanksgiving and getting started with decorating for Christmas. She had made a set of ornaments at church on Sunday, and she had been aching to get a little tree set up in her room so that she could decorate it with them.

The message my colleague offered did not make sense to me. In place of the name of any of my beloved other colleagues there in Chicago, I heard a syllable but couldn't compute it.

"Who?" I asked.

"Deb," she said.

"Who?" I asked more forcefully, simply not being able to put a face with that name from among ministers I knew in Illinois.

"Deb. Your ex-wife."

"What? How?"

"Word is, she hadn't been feeling very well for a couple of weeks and didn't know why. Then, on Wednesday night, her boyfriend stopped at her apartment and found her on the floor. He called the EMTs right away, but she didn't make it to the hospital. I understand it was a pulmonary embolism that went to her lung."

I was dumbfounded. The news still made no sense.

As many will tell you, Debra Schuerer-DeNoon was so alive - vibrant in life, laughter, and song - that the idea of her dead still bears an element of impossibility in my brain. I mean, I know that all of us will die, but her dying..?

Her voice was perhaps the primary reason why I moved to Chicago, back in 1986. We had met in 1982, both working at a B. Dalton Bookseller, and became flirtatious sparring partners almost immediately. I was the student on staff (I'd made the mistake of referring to myself as a "scholar" at our first meeting, and I never lived it down); she the soprano.

Deb was Debra Lehmann, back then. She had married her college sweetheart right after graduating UW-Eau Claire with her degree in Music Performance. He had found a job as the manager of a restaurant in Evansville, Indiana, and the two had decided to set up housekeeping there. She said, she thought that she would be able to work out the traditional marriage, with her college education "having been for an MRS degree."

Anyone knowing her would know how unlikely that was.

They fought a lot, according to Deb's version of the story. I never found out whether he objected to her pursuing a career of her own or if they actually just turned out to be less well matched than they had imagined. What I know is that Deb never wanted to have an argument with me, because of the pain of the arguments they had had.

After a few years, they divorced, and there she was - in Evansville. Granted, she was well-loved among musicians there, and made something of a name for herself locally. But she wanted out, knew that she deserved better, knew that she would need to find a bigger city in which to live, if she was ever to make a career for herself in classical music.

And that was the career she wanted. There were many opportunities people discussed with her, even offered to her - singing jingles for local car sales and other voice-overs, doing more than fill-in gigs with pop cover bands. I nudged her pretty often in those first few years we were together, while I finished college and she tried to make ends meet while paying off student loans. Deb thought that going commercial would be whoring her gift. She refused and refused to consider any alternative.

The most extreme step she might consider was musical theater. She auditioned for the Muny Opera in St. Louis, one spring, at a cattle call. That ruined theater for her, she felt humiliated by the rejection. From there on, it was opera or concert.

We decided together to marry, in early spring of 1984. The decision was so much a matter of the course we were on, it never occurred to us that one of us ought to propose. We set July 1 as the wedding date, named some attendants, invited our families, and off we went.

Neither set of parents was entirely on board with us at the time. I was 22 (she was 26), and I would have another year of college to go, before completing my coursework. That year would take place, after we married.

Her parents were very traditional Roman Catholics and, if it weren't difficult enough for them that Deb had decided to marry in a Methodist sanctuary someone studying to become a Protestant minister, the fact that she had no interest in pursuing an annulment to resolve the matter of her first marriage really muddied the water.

Well, OK, our dads were more or less all right with us marrying. My father, a Methodist minister, even performed the wedding. Her father was absolutely in love with his eldest daughter with that amazing voice, and he was often accused of acting "as though Deb can do no wrong." And our moms didn't offer a whole lot of objection, just expressed how they really wished we would wait.

Our first year was tough. At one point, I was holding down three part-time jobs while she worked full-time as the assistant manager of the bookstore and accepted every paying classical music job she could land. She was the most popular soloist at the Christian Science church, and sang there almost weekly.

Deb used to joke that she just married me to get to Chicago.

But the fact is, the senior minister at the church where we were married pressed me hard to enroll at his alma mater, Garrett-Evangelical, in Evanston on the campus of Northwestern University. I think I may have been more interested in Wesley Seminary in Washington, DC. When I applied to Garrett and was pegged to receive a "full ride" scholarship, it left no doubt in our minds that that was where we were headed.

In 1986, with the help of an Evansville friend who had recently moved to Chicago, Deb scouted for an apartment, and moved in, while I finished up a summer job in Evansville. The place was in the Logan Square neighborhood, just off the traffic circle and nearby the el. The combination made it easy for driving or for getting downtown, which was important. Her day job was as the receiving manager at the B. Dalton Bookseller on Wabash Street, in the Loop; she'd transferred there from Evansville seamlessly.

During that summer, she auditioned for the Chicago Symphony Chorus and was accepted for the volunteer soprano section. What she really wanted was a position in the paid chorus, but that fall she failed the music theory test and was told she would have to wait until the next season to re-apply. She had studied so hard, to stumble this way really brought her down on herself.

The reply from the CSC director was what Deb came to call, "the dreaded thin letter." Rejection letters were always thin. Acceptance letter envelopes were crowded with paperwork.

Dauntless, Deb took the music theory test twice more, and the third time was the charm. In the fall of 1988, she was in the professional chorus of the CSC (thick letter!). By this time, we had moved to Evanston, into student housing - an apartment on Michigan Avenue near South Boulevard. Shortly afterward, she got another thick letter from Northminster Presbyterian Church, where she became the alto section leader thanks to a lead and referral from a CSC friend who led the soprano section.

Also in 1988 B. Dalton transferred Deb from the downtown store, to make her manager of a new location in Evanston on Emerson Street. The branch remained there for five years, until Deb moved with me to northwest Chicago when I accepted a call to my first church after being ordained. She exited, and the store died.

Who's surprised?

More to come...

A Foretaste of God's Tomorrow

What a difference a year can make!

Today, I will be

• toiling away on sermons for a memorial service this Saturday and an Epiphany observance this Sunday (our "Giant Puppet" Service!), 
• composing a schedule for home communions, 
• finalizing a design for Confirmation 2011, 
• interviewing candidates for the position of Coordinator of Youth Ministries, and 
• shopping for my wife's birthday.

It's a busy day, but a merry one. It stands in stark contrast to my bleak Epiphany 2010.

It was a year ago today, after a very long, sleepless night, that I composed an email to some church officers with whom I had met, the evening before.

I had wanted to discuss the future, but the officers had become privy to a conversation I had had with another staff member upon my return from Christmas break. In the conversation I had voiced my concern about how miserable I felt over how much I was apologizing to the church's lay leadership for behavior I did not think was punishable or even particularly out of line, though some of it may have been ill-advised or sadly accidental.

The latest example was my tardiness for the 11 p.m. Christmas Eve service and my sincere embarrassment about it. I had strangely lost track of time in my office (which was in a building a half-block south of the sanctuary) and had missed the single call of concern that had been made to me.

On my first day back - after a holiday break that included two emotional breakdowns, a number of nights in which I did not sleep, and an MRI - I told the staff person that I wondered if I should resign. By the next day, I had decided against it. Instead, I would meet that night with lay leaders to discuss a revised contract which would present my ministry as primarily a vehicle for change - so that the church could regroup, reconfigure, maybe even re-staff itself for an optimal future (possibly including my departure, a couple of years down the road once changes were in place). 

But the content of the previous day's conversation had already circulated to the officers.

When they and I met to discuss my inspiration, the lay leaders said that, despite my decision to soldier on, they thought an immediate resignation would be most advantageous. A poll of the membership had revealed low satisfaction with my not-quite-two-year-old ministry and with the church's current state. A "congregational conversation" that was coming up that Saturday (with staff specifically not invited) was looking as though it would be very controversial, maybe contentious.  Having my resignation in hand could prove helpful for avoiding open conflict, they said.

In that moment, I had agreed.  

Now, consistent with the spirit of Epiphany day, my email said, I'd had an epiphany of my own: I would not in fact resign the pastorate of the church as we had discussed.
Prayer and reflection will do things to such a decision, even reverse it, I said.  I explained that we needed to remove the option of resignation from the table and concentrate on the business at hand, of rebuilding our community.

In a conference call later that day, two of them replied saying first, "We thought we had an agreement," and eventually, "That was not a request for your resignation; you will resign!" In one version of the latter statement, they cited again the negative polling they had done and opined, "You must resign, or else things will get ugly."

It was for the good of the congregation, they insisted.

Regretfully, the next day I circulated an announcement to the congregation that I would resign upon reaching an agreement of terms with the Board of Trustees.

I received replies from some in the church who were very satisfied with my announcement, with many more who were strikingly upset. And on Sunday, one member inquired as to whether the resignation was forced. I equivocated, and the member perceived that I had been given an ultimatum by the officers. The church member called them for clarification.

Their response came to me in the form of another conference call, on Monday. I was not to use the word ultimatum to refer to my resignation; it was inaccurate (I challenged them by saying that "or else things will get ugly" sounded very ultimatum-like even if it wasn't actually an ultimatum).

Furthermore, they instructed me to refrain from vilifying them since they were only advising me in the best interest of the church. "You are leaving, while we have to remain in leadership here, and you will not interfere with our ability to lead." Again they said, it was for the good of the congregation that I comply.

Nine years ago on Epiphany 2002, I preached my candidating sermon at another church to a standing-room-only crowd who unanimously elected me their pastor. The Light for all of us had shone brightly to direct us together!

Six years later, Epiphany arrived on a Sunday again, and I recollected the anniversary with them, even as I was preparing to depart to become the pastor of a new church. The Light would continue to shine on them, even without me - of that I was (and, incidentally, continue to be) convinced.

I was ambivalent about leaving, obviously, but the place to which I was going and the people whom I would soon serve comprised the only church that might have pulled me away.

I considered myself a son of that "new" church, since I had been on staff there during my seminary years, and I had been ordained in its sanctuary. My call bore the hallmarks of a sure thing, as far as I and their search committee were concerned. My election to that church's pulpit had been a unanimously favorable vote, too.

Nevertheless, two years later, I said goodbye.

Sadly, we have yet to say goodbye completely. In correspondence through attorneys with the church leadership, I am convinced that they, as I, wish we could make the past to be truly past. We are slogging through issues over the sale of the home they helped me and my family to purchase... and how we will distribute the unhappy financial outcome associated with it. It makes us all wonder, Will our ending never end!

But the sun rises on this Epiphany day like the Sun of Righteousness which dawned on that ancient star-lit night millennia ago. There is a gracious beacon shining to guide us toward God's tomorrow.

The business of yesterday may still be somewhat with us. But a foretaste of God's tomorrow I acknowledge in my gladsome work today.