2014-01-07: Assistants. Hmm.

Mom told me that Dad has now trained someone to take his place doing the books at the free clinic. I have very mixed feelings about this. Dad is 85 and has been feeling his age for some time now, but going to the clinic to do the books several times a week has given him a real purpose for getting out of the house on a regular basis and staying active in his area of expertise. Not sure what will take its place now, and I fear this may lead to a real decline soon. Staying on the board and going in every quarter to look things over will be quite a change from his routine of well more than a decade now.

This puts me in mind of when Frederick Davis, the founding director of the So. Calif. Mormon Choir, was forcibly retired. He’d resisted taking on an assistant conductor for years, but after one particularly close call — he barely made it on time to a concert — the choir board insisted. So fine, he ended up with the very ambitious Brother RF as the assistant (of course, having a woman lead the entire choir — women having occasionally led all-women numbers — was unthinkable in the patriarchal musical scheme of things — but I digress). Anyway, it wasn’t long after RF was appointed that a long-time whisper campaign of complaining seemed to escalate exponentially. 

Now, it is true that Fred’s hearing wasn't what it used to be and sometimes it seemed that he wasn’t catching the choir singing off-key the way he used to when he was younger, but he was still a fine showman and musician. But once the campaign took off, a lot of untoward behind-the-scenes machinations were set in place, and ultimately Fred was induced to resign. I sang in the Choir at his last performance of Handel’s Messiah in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in December 1981, after which concert he was presented with a plaque and applauded and so on.

It was downright sickening how he’d been railroaded. (Kind of like “Kathleen Lindt” in my book about MML's alter-ego, “L2M,” was forced out and then voted an honorary VP post on the board, which of course she turned down.) I tried singing under RF, but after a couple of rehearsals, I was done. Fortunately, I was getting married and had a good excuse for no longer participating. (I’d known RF and his wife for a long time — before I joined the Choir, even — and I couldn't be 100% sure how much of a hand in Fred’s treatment he/they’d had, though I suspected… quite a bit. Better to leave gracefully.) 

I cannot say that Fred declined fast afterwards, and perhaps I and others of his fans were more heartbroken and outraged than he was. In fact, it wasn’t until his wife died some years later than he went downhill — essentially stopped eating. When I went to interview him, he was thin as a rail… took me to lunch and had only a small bowl of soup. He was still mostly intact at that point, but he died not too long thereafter. I was by then living abroad and could not go to his funeral; I wish I knew that his memorabilia and recordings and other musical effects were handled properly, but… I rather doubt it, alas.

Well. My dad has other things he can do to occupy his time, yes, but external expectations provide greater incentive to action than a personal to-do list (as I know too well). Here’s hoping that he — and we — will not come to regret his stepping down from a position that he has filled expertly and honorably these many years.