A Precious Gift for a Widowed Husband

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Lillian, who was an opera singer in Chicago for 18 years, was 91 when she passed. On Tom's 97th birthday, he received a gift from his son Jarlath that words alone cannot describe. This is the story of that gift, an unearthed treasure that brought joy and life to his father. And for just a moment, through the magic of technology and art, brought a bit of heaven to earth. Here's Jarlath to tell this remarkable story.

You'll also hear from Jarlath's father, Tom. I was back in town for a memorial for my mom, along with everyone else in the family, that we had postponed at least once or twice because she had died earlier in COVID and we were not able to do that. Now the memorial is over.

Everyone's gone home. I'm sticking around with my dad and trying to figure out what can I do to help. And I'm just trying to organize some things in the basement, see what I can get rid of. And I noticed a large pile of records and I thought, oh, I should be able to get rid of most of these. And so as I'm figuring out what to give away, a few records jumped out at me because they were 78s, which are unique and old. The other was that they didn't have commercial labels on them. They had some kind of a label that was to be filled out. So it made me wonder if they were some kind of custom recordings. I did set them aside and I asked my dad about them later and he said, you know, I'm not sure. So I put them on an old turntable that we had that was in really, really poor condition.

It required a lot of thumb pressure to get through these series of skips on the record. But I was able to tease out a voice I recognized and it sounded just like my mom. My mom had been a professional singer for years and so we grew up listening to her all the time. So a very recognizable voice.

She sounded quite young. And so I asked my dad about this. I said, well, what are these records?

Do you know anything about them? And he said, you know, I think that they might be the recordings of a chorus we put together back in the St. Leo Parish right after I got back from World War II. And it turns out that there was a, I don't know, a four or 500 young people had joined a social club in that parish.

My dad was asked to try to put together a chorus out of that group. So he raised his hand and said, I can do that. And he started looking for recruits. And somewhere along the line, he was introduced to my mom who was happy to accept the invitation to join the chorus. And not too long after that, he was introduced to her voice.

And she came to one of our meetings. We always asked for a little entertainment. If anybody could sing or tap dance or play the piano or do some, read a poem, whatever.

We asked for volunteers for entertainment. Well, a friend of Lillian's was there too, and she knew that Lillian could sing. And she said, come on, Lillian, you sing. And she got up and she sang the Ave Maria and it blew me away. I had never heard anything like it.

I had never heard a song like that before in my life. And I thought, my, my, my, why? Oh, what is happening here?

What is happening? After that meeting where Lillian sang the Ave Maria, I continued to drive her to the meetings for the young people's club that we had. And month after month, I grew to know her better and better.

And it didn't take me long to realize that I had finally found the one that I would really like to be with for the rest of my life. So I've got these old, old, very scratched records and I've got a lousy turntable. And so I know I need help. So I reached to our neighbor, our go-to guy for everything that my dad needs. And he mentioned that he had a friend in the neighborhood with a sound studio, which sounded much better than anything I had thought of. We were able to gather up the records and I was able to get them to my neighbor who would be able to get them to the sound studio.

And I was able to order some headphones off Amazon, make sure they were there in time. And my sister had her phone so she could hook it all up. And at just the right magic moment, she was able to hand the headphones to my dad on his birthday so he could hear my mom sing.

Fast forward to my 97th birthday in October. My daughter, Regina, came over with a pair of earphones and put them on me. And lo and behold, I heard Lillian singing the Ave Maria. Ave Maria. I was able to listen to Lillian's voice so very clearly. It was the most beautiful sound that anybody could have on any birthday ever, ever, ever. And what a beautiful story. And that neighbor, by the way, was the producer of that piece, John Elfner.

The Ave Maria is one of the most recognizable and well-known prayers throughout the Western world. The most memorable version for Tom Lyons is Lillian's. The story of a precious gift here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.

Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to our americanstories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.

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