From VOICES: Upstate by Varick A. Chittenden

Volume 32
Fall-Winter
2006

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Probably Sara’s greatest gift to her community—for which she will best be remembered—was her devotion to music in the beautiful little Congregational church she grew to love. When she retired as organist at age ninety-eight, she had logged well over fifty-five years at piano and organ there.

Photo: Martha Cooper

Varick A. Chittenden is professor emeritus of English, SUNY Canton College of Technology, and executive director of Traditional Arts in Upstate New York (TAUNY). Photo: Martha Cooper

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Music Legend Dies at 101 by Varick A. Chittenden

One spring morning this year, our local paper carried a headline: “Music Legend Dies at 101.” If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought the line was for someone like the late composer Irving Berlin or ragtime piano player Eubie Blake (whose claim to age one hundred was actually in dispute). “Legend” to me has always suggested a life of great significance to many, a character larger than life in her or his own time, with stories that live on long after. But not this morning. The headline this time was for Sara Clark Chittenden, born in Potsdam, New York, on October 22, 1904, and died in Canton, New York, on April 20, 2006. My own mother! It would never have occurred to us children to call our mother a legend. By most standards today, I suppose she lived a pretty ordinary life. Her father was a small-town undertaker and furniture dealer; her mother was a homemaker. She was the middle child of three sisters; went to high school, where she met her football player sweetheart, whom she’d later marry; went to college to become a teacher; taught in rural schools for many years; and with my dad raised three of us to adulthood. She became a grandmother five times, a great-grandmother eleven, lived in the family home until her old age, and died in a nursing home.

So what is a legend, and why was Sara Chittenden one? Strictly speaking, of course, legends are narratives about the recent past, complete with real people and events. I expect most folklorists agree with our colleague Lydia Fish, “A legend is simply a story told as true.” But often, at least in popular use, some people—especially those whose traits or exploits inspire interesting and unusual stories about them—become legends, too.

For Sara to be the “music legend” of the headline, there must be more. She came by her interest in music quite naturally. Her mother, Fanny Towne, had been a star pupil of Miss Julia Crane, founder of the celebrated Crane School of Music, and with her perfect pitch had traveled with her mentor throughout the Northeast to demonstrate new methods of teaching singing. She performed in local musical productions and was lured away from her own Presbyterian church to sing for the Episcopalians in town for five dollars a week in the 1890s.

Sara grew up taking piano, voice, and cello lessons, before she graduated from Crane in 1926. After college, she married Clark Chittenden, son of a general storekeeper, and moved to his family’s hometown fourteen miles from her home, where he went into the business. She started out teaching in scattered one-room schoolhouses where, as the circuit-riding music teacher, she thrived on the children’s enthusiasm and excitement. The schools had no money for extras, so she introduced rhythm band instruments— tambourines, handbells, sand blocks, rhythm sticks, and more—so every child could participate. Together they worked on musical numbers and skits for holiday gatherings, using her imagination to get even the most reluctant involved. Eventually, she went to slightly larger, centralized schools, where she could teach and direct vocal music to kids from kindergarten through high school.

Outside of school, she provided music everywhere she went. Over the years, she would sing for innumerable weddings and funerals. She was the pianist for the local Eastern Star chapter, and she organized and directed generations of people in the church choir. She was often called upon to substitute for Sunday services and ceremonies in churches of all denominations for several miles around. Not at all familiar with Roman Catholic rituals, she was pleased to be asked to play the organ of the only other church in Hopkinton—Holy Cross—when the bishop came to celebrate Mass. She always remembered the occasion best, however, because a mouse appeared on the keyboard during her rehearsal!

Probably Sara’s greatest gift to her community—for which she will best be remembered—was her devotion to music in the beautiful little Congregational church she grew to love. When she retired as organist at age ninety-eight, she had logged well over fifty-five years at piano and organ there. A few years before, the church had celebrated “Sara Sunday,” when she decided to cut back a little. After that, they insisted she still play the last hymn any Sunday she felt like being there. On the day of her one-hundredth birthday, once again she agreed to play one number. We children worried she was too fragile; she, on the other hand, was in her glory. After the minister helped her down the short aisle to the organ, she took a minute, adjusted a few stops, took off her glasses, and played as though she were fifty! Her fingers were bent with arthritis and missed a few notes here and there, but she made it all the way through, with some of her signature flourishes to boot. By that time in her life, she’d often forget names and even important details of her past, but she never forgot how to play. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house!

At her calling hours and memorial service, old friends and former students retold lots of stories about Sara—about her neighborliness, optimism, resilience, feistiness, and sense of humor—but it almost always came back to the music. Square dancing at school recess, Christmas pageants on a shoestring, piano lessons at her home, and choir practices at church. One couple described how she played for both their wedding and their recent fiftieth anniversary.

While never achieving—or seeking—fame as a musician, Sara surely acquired lots of admirers as her small town’s “music lady.” Her singing and playing, teaching and encouraging, seemed to inspire at least an appreciation for music in many whose lives she touched. If some ordinary people become extraordinary in the minds of their friends, and if stories that make them a little larger than life persist after they’re gone, then maybe Sara Chittenden was a legend after all. She would be amused.

Varick Chittenden’s Upstate column was published in Voices Vol. 32, Fall Winter 2006. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society now.