About Worthington United Methodist Church
And I Remember.Personal Church Histories
Bill Cady and Bob Brooks
During the summer of 1952 many Americans were mesmerized by the first televised gavel-to-gavel coverage of national political conventions. Worthington then was a plain and simple village, separated from the city of Columbus by a mile-wide swath of unincorporated Sharon Township and from Delaware County by a vast landscape of corn fields and a few apple orchards. Worthington Methodist Church in those days counted approximately 350 members.
In the last week of June, 1952, two young families moved to Worthington: Bill and Marcella Cady on the 27 and Bob and Ruth Brooks a few days later. The couples had purchased homes opposite one another on Indianola Avenue in Colonial Hills, and on July 4 they met at the community fireworks celebration. Bill and Bob share both a profession (they're engineers) and an avocation (they love to sing). They joined our Chancel Choir in October, 1952. One can imagine the delight of the director, Roberta Christman, when she found that her tenor section had suddenly doubled! No doubt the other two tenors, Jim McLaughlin and Fred Ely, were equally gratified with their new reinforcements.
Bob soon learned that Bill doesn't read music. Bill has, however, an enviable ability to recall what he has heard: after one run-through, he knows the notes. Because their voices are similar, Bob and Bill have often collaborated. For example, in the late 50's Roberta had scheduled Bob to sing in a quartet, but during the preceding week he sustained injuries at work from a leaky propane tank that burst into flames. Sporting mitten-like bandages on his hands and not feeling well enough to sing, Bob recruited Bill for the tenor part. The choir loft in our old sanctuary (now the Potter Chapel) was behind the pulpit, so Rev. Harold Buckey couldn't see the quartet, and he later confessed that he hadn't realized the substitution of Bill for Bob until half-way through the piece. On another occasion Bob was assigned a solo part that proved to require more volume than he could manage. Bill surreptitiously augmented Bob's voice, with no one the wiser.
Bob and Bill also remember the week when Roberta scheduled for the choir an anthem so old and so familiar that every member could sing it perfectly without looking at the score. As a prank, Bill and Bob decided to hold their music upside-down on Sunday morning. Eventually Roberta spotted the anomaly: at first the choir noted a hint of surprise on her face, followed by an incipient scowl and that "dear Lord, what have you done?" look. Quick to recover and generous by nature, Roberta continued to conduct, and the anthem went on without a hitch.
Then there were the minstrel shows: two of them in the mid 50's. The choir provided not only the singing and acting but also the content for the events, which were presented to raise money for the music program at Worthington Methodist. Bill and Bob remember, for example, that someone coined a long alliterative phrase in which "Potter's pianos" was a major ingredient. They believe that the humor in these productions would have been just as successful without the "minstrel" context, and in retrospect the mere notion of "black-face" entertainment strikes Bob and Bill as insensitive. The second of those shows did prompt vehement protests from NAACP and others.
In 1964 we hired our first Director of Music, Carl Knitter. Bob and Bill remember that he had definite ideas, including a distaste for the frayed and faded black robes that the choir had been wearing for who-knows-how-long. He negotiated a deal to purchase, for only $5 each, three dozen slightly used red robes from graduating seniors at Westminster College.
Knitter also wanted the organist to face the director (rather than to attempt to discern the conductor's intentions via a small mirror). And he thought that the choir's efforts would be heard to much better effect if their rows were elevated in increments from front to back. Heedless of any chain-of-command notions, Carl recruited several choir members, including Bob and Bill, to accomplish these alterations. For one week the volunteers worked evenings from Monday through Friday, plus all day and well into the night on Saturday. Early on they discovered that the wiring for the organ was elderly and fragile, so the project took on a huge expansion: to rewire the entire console. Fortunately their crew included several persons who knew exactly how to accomplish this! In the meantime the Trustees happened to take a walk-through of the church, and they "copped" the choir's project; Bill and Bob have never known exactly how that played out, except that the improvements were allowed to proceed.
In 1967 Maurice Casey succeeded Carl Knitter as our Director of Music. During Maurice's tenure we have hosted many internationally famous guest composers, and Bob and Bill are glad for their experiences with such greats as Alice Parker, William Mathias and Mark Hayes. Both Bill and Bob regard Jester Hairston as their favorite because his music is fun to sing and because they admired him as a person. They also remember John Rutter, who spoke to the children of our church saying, "Here's a musical score. Without words, it goes 'da-da-da-da-da-da.' That doesn't mean much! We really need the words, don't you think?"
During the 70's Bob and Bill, along with Jim Chapman and Walden Wren, started a men's quartet that eventually expanded to Summer Singers Limited, Men's Division. From 1982 through 1994 the Summer Singers provided the musical offering for just one (i.e., "Limited") worship service per summer. <
p> Why do Bill and Bob keep coming back? Because they love to sing! And they value the camaraderie that they have experienced in the Chancel Choir. These days you'll see them unobtrusively exiting the chancel in order to sit with their wives of 54 years during the sermon or to join them in Communion: making an important statement about their faith and their loyalties. Congratulations and many thanks to you, Bob and Bill, for your 50-years-and-counting in our Chancel Choir!-Jean Parks Lynn, historian