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Meet The Chorister Series: # 2
Meet Sylvia Gates
 We call her the Grande Dame of The Unitarian Choir, not just because she’s our most senior member, and not just because she’s sung in the choir longer than anyone else, but because she’s beloved, especially by her fellow altos, and a most elegant spokesperson. You can see that for yourself by watching the video that appears when you click on “Music and Arts Program” at the church website.
Sylvia Breed Gates was born in Boston and raised in Swampscott, Massachusetts where she was christened at The First Universalist Church of Lynn in 1925. Her family has long and deep roots on Massachusetts Bay and with the Universalist religion. “My parents, grandparents, and great grandparents were all married in the church.” Not all together happy about the merger with Unitarians (in 1962) she misses some of the rituals from her past, including reciting the “confession of faith” which she did word for word during our visit.
She describes her childhood growing up in this coastal town as a “cheery, happy universe.” In summer she rode her bicycle around town, and swam in the Atlantic Ocean; in winter she enjoyed the snow— “the milkman made his deliveries by sleigh,” she said. Her father was a Harvard graduate who ran the family shoe factory and her mother, “a unique woman,” graduated from Smith College in 1910. “Only 1/2 of one percent of women earned college degrees then.” The Smith Club often met at their home, and so Sylvia met some very distinguished women including professor and novelist, Mary Ellen Chase. There was no question that she would also attend Smith.
The roots of three of her passions: music, sports (she still plays golf) and service were clearly nurtured in the family home. She recalled her father singing songs such as Bendermeer’s Stream to her at bedtime. Her first experience of group singing besides at school, was eight years of summer camp. She sang in the choir at her all-girls preparatory school and then again at Smith. “One of our choir members at boarding school was the daughter of the famous orchestral conductor, Leopold Stokowski.” It was at Smith, at the age of 17, that Sylvia met her long time friend, Anne Winters. Senior members of the Unitarian choir well remember Anne Winters, who along with Alice Tinney helped create the first volunteer choir at First Church years before Mark’s arrival “Anne was a star, she had a beautiful voice.”
I asked Sylvia to tell me of a time when singing opened the door to an interesting or unusual experience. There were several to choose from, but this one I loved best: “In 1948 (at the age of 23) I was in France as a volunteer at the College Cevenol in Chambon-sur-Lignon (Haute Loire) when I was invited by a Dean of Smith College to participate in a project being organized by The American Friends Service Committee in Berlin. No civilians were allowed in Berlin except this particular group. I flew into Berlin from Frankfurt on the airlift, just 10 days after it started.” She described a very cold and unpleasant flight in a cargo plane which was delivering sacks of coal and food. “We were bussed to a villa—some German girls, people from the Norwegian underground, one English chap (a conscientious objector sent to Buchenwald as a medic) and me—where we stayed for almost four weeks. All told, between 25-30 volunteers.
“Berlin was in shambles, the heart of the city was devastated. The rubble women with feet wrapped in newspaper because they had no shoes, were picking up the rubble by hand and placing it in push carts. Our job was to help clean out an old army barracks which was to be used as a staging area for the transport of German orphans to the U.S. American Zone, where they could be fed and housed.” Sylvia told of an afternoon venture into Berlin. “The English chap and I decided to visit Hitler’s bunker... where he’d killed himself and his mistress.” To their surprise there was no one about that chilling place as they poked through the rubble.
“General Lucius D. Clay, The U.S. Commander-in-Chief of the American Zone in Berlin, wanted to show the world that something ‘good’ and reasonably normal was going on in Berlin, despite the Russian blockade. So the day before we left he invited us to his office headquarters—a massive building guarded by United States soldiers, all over six feet tall, mostly black, in dashing dress uniforms and armed with bayonets.” Sylvia, chuckled. “A big show to impress the Germans!” The story and photograph appeared in Stars and Stripes.
“We were ushered in to his office. I remember him smiling, being upbeat, and businesslike. He thanked us for coming, for our work, and asked if we had any questions. We replied that we would like to sing for him. We circled the general’s desk and sang Dona Nobis Pacem (Give us Peace)—at the heart of the Cold War.”
--Julia Ingram |
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