One of the saddest aspects of the current demographic crisis affecting much of the world is the loss of those marvelous figures of uncles, aunts, and cousins. Extended family are a gift, for they give us a home away from home, resources in times of crisis, and a deeper sense of being connected to the human family.
My childhood was filled with extended family. My mother was the youngest of eight siblings; my father was the youngest of four (we connected with my father’s younger half-brother when I was an adult). All were married, so I had ten aunts and ten uncles, and about thirty cousins growing up. The great part was that most of them were close. I saw them all quite regularly.
I think of the aunts and uncles fondly, but they are almost all gone. On my mom’s side, only my Aunt Myrna’s widowed husband, Willie, survives – still playing golf (well, no doubt) in his nineties. On Dad’s side, his older brother, Gary, died at the end of July. A composer and musician, he deserves a requiem.
As I am a writer and not a composer, I hope this column will do. I also hope that it will encourage readers to reconnect with their extended families – truly one of God’s greatest gifts to us all.
Uncle Gary was the second of four surviving children of Harold and Mary Deavel. Born February 15, 1929, he was precocious musically. My grandparents both played the piano by ear, and Uncle Gary told me once that he remembered listening to his mother plink out the tunes in their home. When the family was living in Dayton, Ohio, he began his formal musical studies at the Miami Valley Conservatory. When Gary was eight, my grandfather left the family.
It was a crushing blow to the entire family. My grandmother brought the children back to North Liberty, Indiana, to live with her mother. Yet even amidst this trial, the children were able to grow and learn. Uncle Gary kept up with his music. He was the official organist for Pine Creek Church of the Brethren at age 12. He graduated as valedictorian of North Liberty High a few years later and served in the U.S. Army as a chaplain’s assistant and organist.
When he returned from military service, he attended Manchester College (now Manchester University) in northern Indiana, earning a bachelor’s degree as well as a wife, Charlotte Schutz, another musician and teaching student whom he married in 1953. He went on for a second bachelor’s and then a master’s degree in music at Chicago’s Sherwood School of Music.
When a teaching position opened up at Manchester, Uncle Gary started a 35-year career teaching piano, organ, composition, and humanities. During that time, he earned a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music. His doctoral dissertation – later published as a book – analyzed two operas by British composer Benjamin Britten.
As a child, I loved going over to visit Uncle Gary and Aunt Charlotte in Manchester – and I loved when they visited me. They were the most sophisticated of the uncles and aunts. Uncle Gary smoked a pipe. Aunt Charlotte, a grade-school teacher, usually had an interesting book for me. They would have wine with dinner.
Aunt Charlotte introduced me to a lifelong love: the illustrator and children’s book writer Kate Seredy. Uncle Gary told me about his travels to England. As an adult, I talked with him about the writer Max Beerbohm. I found out later that not only had Uncle Gary written about Benjamin Britten, but he had also done a period of private study in composition with the master in 1965. If I ever visit Suffolk, England, I am going to go to the Britten archives, since the internet tells me there is a stack of correspondence between them.
I remember proudly going over to Manchester College for that institution’s centennial in 1988. The Manchester Symphony Orchestra played several of Uncle Gary’s compositions, including “Manchester Fair,” the college song that he had co-written, and a multi-part symphonic piece called “Manchester Variations.” The one I liked best was a cantata titled “This Green Morning,” which set a series of poems by his daughter, Christine Deavel, to a variety of styles of music.
When Uncle Gary and Aunt Charlotte retired and moved up to Michigan (first Crystal Lake and then Traverse City), we visited them in that Great Lakes paradise. They both remained active in music, volunteering, and other church and civic activities. Sadly, however, on my birthday in 1998, Aunt Charlotte died at the much too young age of 68.
Uncle Gary was grief-stricken at the loss of his wife of 45 years. I think he wrote her obituary, for this line always struck me as both true and written in his voice: “Charlotte was the definition of all that is fine in human nature; she was a woman of kindness, grace, and intelligence.”
For months, he had a hard time sleeping in his own bed. We thought he might well pass away of a broken heart. I was impressed by the devotion he had to the love of his life. I was also impressed that he made his way out of grief and into a new lease on life as a widower. He kept playing music. He kept composing music. He would visit his daughter in Seattle and go with her to hear the Seattle Opera’s Ring Cycle – though, in later years, even he had a hard time sticking through all of it.
He was vibrant. A few years ago, when I was in Michigan at a conference, I realized I had a free day. When I contacted Uncle Gary to see about driving up and seeing him again, he told me that he was “too busy.” At 93! But I believed him. He told me about the multiple music groups for which he played the piano (the organ became too taxing in later years) and the many concerts they were doing that week.
I wish I had gone anyway, if only to listen to Uncle Gary play again. Christy tells me that he was still playing piano until a few weeks before his death at 96. Like all my aunts and uncles, I shall miss him. When I think of him, what dominates is a sense of gratitude.
Uncles are glorious creatures. I hope future generations have many uncles – and ones as good as mine.
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.
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