HONORING MY DAD'S SISTER - EVALYN HAMMEL WOHLFORD

Tennis

Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open 2009
Philipp Kohlschreiber withdrew May 14, Thursday, 2009. Therefore, Rafa had a walk-over into the quarter finals, where he will face fellow countryman Fernando Verdasco.

The match will be at 2 p.m. USA EDT/DST
Friday, May 15, 2009

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TRIBUTE to EVALYN JANE HAMMEL WOHLFORD

My dad's sister, the only surviving sibling of five children, and the only girl, has retired from her beloved music - her beautiful piano playing - due to physical limitations. A day she never wanted to come. Upon her retirement after 67 years of sharing her gift of music in the church I grew up in - in Huntington, Indiana - the church is honoring her soon.

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I Surrender All - hymn
Uploaded by WorshipVideo

This is a note I mailed to her recently...

May 10, 2009

Dear Evalyn,

Something dear to me is the wonderful heritage that I carry with me from the days of sitting in the old sanctuary of the East State Street Church of God (the one with the sanctuary that included the sections that could be closed off for Sunday school classes and the nursery in the balcony). The most wonderful memories that are with me today, come from the music, the beautiful “old” hymns that you played and we sang. Thank you, Evalyn, for the gift of music you developed, cherish, nourished my heart with and shared with us all. I owe you a debt that I can never repay ~ I can just be grateful and pass on the blessing.

Also, very meaningful to me were those Sunday nights that the congregation spent the whole evening just singing hymns. I remember Deeny, Stanton and Melba’s daughter, and Karen, Vic and Frieda’s daughter, singing the descants to the congregational singing of He’s the Lily of the Valley. And Vic and Stanton singing the lines to Peace Like a River. I just loved the singing! I could sit as a child, let my mind wander during the sermons, but the music is what always brought me back into the service. A verse of Just As I Am, Softly and Tenderly, I Surrender All or It is Well With My Soul touched my soul where just words never could reach. The music of these hymns still affect me in a very special way.

Please accept my appreciation and gratitude for helping bring music into my life.

With love

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Another hymn I grew up with....Softly and Tenderly
Used in the movie A Trip to Bountiful - (which I recommend)
Uploaded by RRRGroup2

And I sent the following to her inside a card via the church, which is honoring her on May 31, 2009:

The Gift of Music

Dedicated to Evalyn (Hammel) Wohlford

by Sandra Hammel


Music reaches places in us that words just can’t.

Ah, yes, words can lift, inspire, summon us;

But what can wash over us like music?

Enter our inner most sanctuary and become one with our being?

Permeate our mind, our heart, our spirit

and be present with us in our hour of joy,

need

or sadness?

And never fail to be there for us?

Nothing better for the hungering soul

or brimming delight is the music that is always

there for the simple taking and giving.

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An die musik ~ To Music
Composed by Franz Schubert

Lyrics
O gracious Art, in how many grey hours
When life's fierce orbit encompassed me,
Have you kindled my heart to warm love,
And charmed me into a better world!

Oft has a sigh, issuing from your harp,
A sweet, blessed chord of yours,
Thrown open the heaven of better times;
O gracious Art, for that I thank you!

May 10, 2009

Dear Evalyn,

You have nurtured your gift of music and shared it with so many of us. I want you to know how it touched me and helped me find my own personal relationship with the gift of music. A Chinese grandfather of one of my students once said to me, that a music teacher gives of her soul to her students. We have all been your students in a way. And we have all benefited from you as you have given of your soul to us. I can’t imagine life without the communion music provides for my best self. Music is a sacred gift and it was entrusted to you and you let it sing out beautifully.

With love and affection

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Softly and Tenderly - another version
Uploaded by hoover4000


Evalyn is the girl in the middle
My dad is the one holding the ball.


Ferne Wiles Hammel
Mother of Evalyn, my dad, Mark, Harold, Jerald and Richard

In a portion of a tribute to her mom, Evalyn wrote this:

...Mom walked with me to Salamonie Avenue to Bessie Branstrator’s home for my piano lessons, which was about 3 ½ miles one way. (Before this, Bessie came to our house.) Mom’s day was busy, but she still took the time and would wait for me, and we returned home and she never seemed to mind the walk. She sat beside me while I practiced because I wanted her there, not because I wouldn't practice, which Mark tells folks. She played hymns, but I don’t recall her helping much with the music.

I enjoyed helping Mom wash clothes because we had a wringer washer, and it was fun sending those sheets, etc., through, but Mom was always watchful that I didn’t get my hands caught in the wringer.

Pop was busy earning a living for his family, and Mom would walk to Grandma and Grandpa Wiles’ home on Walnut Street which was about four miles, and we all walked to church, but I don’t remember minding this. But maybe, my brothers were afraid to say if they did. We had no car, and we attended revival meetings for two weeks, every night except Saturdays, and then sometimes we had church on this night, also. Church was 1.8 miles, and some nights were mighty cold or hot. One cold, cold day, Mom walked to John Tipton school with extra blankets for we kids and then while some of us got rides home, Mom walked back to our home in the frigid weather. I never understood where the other coats came from. This brings back sad memories to me, thinking how cold Mom must have been!

Mom was the buffer between we kids and Pop who was always serious; at least, this is my recollection of him. The summer before I entered high school, Mom made an appointment for me to get my pigtails cut and permed. A cab brought me back to Grandma and Grandpa Hammel’s who lived next door to our house, and as I stood on their sidewalk, Pop asked Mom who that was standing over there. I never knew what Mom told our Pop, but he never said a word to me about me shorn locks.

....our Pop ...said to me as we stood by Mom’s casket, "There lays an angel!"

I’m sure there was mental as well as physical suffering when Mom’s body was taken over by acromegaly (caused by dysfunction of the pituitary gland) which made here bones grow. She told me this happened when she was pregnant with our brother, Mark, so this was the way I always knew her...

...Mom loved to work outdoors and especially in her flower gardens. She had a beautiful variety of Iris, and I wish we still had the yellow rose bush which grew by the sidewalk in the back. She also, mowed the lawn with a push mower, and she would say she walked to Mt. Etna and back when she completed this job. I remember how she would rinse out her wet clothes and hang them on the clothesline to dry before they were laundered.

Evalyn's mom - my Grandma Hammel

On May 10, 1963, Mom had been working in her flower garden in the front of the house, and Pop had been working in his shop in the garage when he looked out and couldn’t see Mom. He found her in the house where she had laid all of the grandkids pictures down, face up. We think she had a premonition that she was not going to be here very long. Pop asked Mom if she would like to ride along to Baer Field to get some lumber. On the way Mom gasped a big breath and was gone just that quickly. Pop said he thought she was choking on her tongue so he tried to get hold of it to help her but with no success. Pop called me from Ft. Wayne with the news. I had lost my best friend and my precious Mom. Our pop was a very distraught and lost man after the death of our Mom, or Mother, as Mark always called her.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH ~ SUPER MAN

Brilliant. The mind of a composer ~ a great composer ~ is brilliant. I compose, but I am entirely an amateur, limited in my skill. A composer is a genius. Johann Sebastian Bach's music from my experience, which is small, is very mathematical. Theoretically, I find it very rational.

Although, I am more drawn to the drama of Ludwig_van_Beethoven
J S Bach, lends the world sense and order for me. Excerpt from the film Copying Beethoven

Music ~ that has been kept alive because we adore it and are in awe of it ~ is a phenomenon. And those who create such music are truly our superheroes.

How special are our artists. They lift us up, inspire us and are usually paid like paupers.
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Bach - BWV 0147 - Jesu, Joy of Man
Uploaded by Quarouble

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Eisenach
Coat of arms	Location
Administration
Country	Germany
State	Thuringia

Period

EISENACH: 1685-1695

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21st l685, the son of Johann Ambrosius, court trumpeter for the Duke of Eisenach and director of the musicians of the town of Eisenach in Thuringia (Germany). For many years, members of the Bach family throughout Thuringia had held positions such as organists, town instrumentalists, or Cantors, and the family name enjoyed a wide reputation for musical talent.

The family at Eisenach lived in a reasonably spacious home just above the town center, with rooms for apprentice musicians, and a large grain store. (The pleasant and informative "Bach Haus" Museum in Eisenach does not claim to be the original family home). Here young Johann Sebastian was taught by his father to play the violin and the harpsichord. He was also initiated into the art of organ playing by his famous uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, who was then organist at the Georgenkirche in Eisenach. Sebastian was a very willing pupil and soon became extraordinarily proficient with these instruments.

When he was eight years old he went to the old Latin Grammar School, where Martin Luther had once been a pupil; he was taught reading and writing, Latin grammar, and a great deal of scripture, both in Latin and German. The boys of the school formed the choir of the St. Georgenkirche, which gave Johann Sebastian an opportunity to sing in the regular services, as well as in the nearby villages. He was described as having 'an uncommonly fine treble voice'. The Lutheran spirit would have been strong in Eisenach, for it was in the Wartburg Castle standing high above the town, that Martin Luther, in hiding from his persecutors, translated the New Testament into German.

Roads were still unpaved in the smaller towns, sewage and refuse disposal poorly organized, and the existence of germs not yet scientifically discovered. Mortality rates were high as a result. At an early age Johann Sebastian lost a sister and later a brother. When he was only nine years old his mother died. Barely nine months later his father also died.

Johann Sebastian and one of his brothers, Johann Jakob, were taken into the home of their eldest brother, Johann Christoph (born l671) who had recently married and settled down at Ohrdruf, a small town thirty miles south-east of Eisenach. Johann Christoph, a former pupil of Pachelbel, was now well established as organist of the St. Michaeliskirche, Ohrdruf.

Period

OHRDRUF: 1695-1700

Johann Christoph was an excellent teacher - all of his five sons were to reach positions of some eminence in music, and he was a keen student of the latest keyboard compositions.

Johann Sebastian at once settled down happily in this household studying the organ and harpsichord with great interest under his brother, and he quickly mastered all the pieces he had been given. When a new organ was installed at the Ohrdruf church, Christoph allowed his young brother to watch its construction. He also encouraged him to study composition and set Sebastian to copying music by German organist composers such as Jakob Froberger, Johann Caspar Kerll and Pachelbel. An anecdote tells how Christoph punished his young brother when he discovered he had copied a forbidden musical manuscript by moonlight over a period of six months, and confiscated the precious copy.

During this period Johann Sebastian attended the Gymnasium (grammar school) of Ohrdruf, once a monastic foundation, which had become one of the most progressive schools in Germany. He made excellent progress in Latin, Greek and theology, and had reached the top form at a very early age. The scholars of the Gymnasium, as at Eisenach, were also employed as choir-boys, and their Cantor, Elias Herda, had a high opinion of Johann Sebastian's voice and musical capabilities.

It was his excellent soprano voice that found Johann Sebastian a position in the choir of the wealthy Michaelis monastery at Lüneburg, which was known to provide a free place for boys who were poor but with musical talent. This was no doubt arranged by Elias Herda who had held a scholarship there himself.

In the Spring of 1700 Johann Sebastian set out with his schoolfriend, Georg Erdmann, who was also joining the choir, on the journey of a hundred and eighty miles north to Lüneburg. It is not known how they traveled; most probably the journey would have been undertaken largely on foot, relieved where possible with a lift on a river barge or farmer's cart. Doubtless the two boys would have been given free food and accommodation in the many monasteries along the route.Johann Sebastian Bach's Life

Wikipedia page of Johann Sebastian Bach

Deutschland or Germany page

IOAN GRUFFUDD - THE SWEET AND THE FABULOUS IOAN

WHY GO TO SLEEP WHEN I CAN STAY UP AND FIND THESE FUN VIDEO CLIPS ALL NIGHT? TOO much fun!! My very first introduction to Ioan Gruffudd was as William Wilberforce in the movie Amazing Grace. Then I saw him in the Forsyte Saga and Hornblower. Ioan is from Cardiff, Wales and was recently married to Alice Evans in Mexico on the beach with best man, Matthew Rhys by his side.
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ioan gruffudd
Uploaded by echidna82

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