Dean's Message August 2000

I am writing this in mid-June because I just discovered that although we have no newsletter in July, I will have just returned from Seattle by the July 15 deadline for the August newsletter. I will attend the AGO convention in Seattle and then Wayne is flying out to join me for a week of vacation in the Pacific Northwest. So my convention report will have to wait until the September newsletter.

We are halfway through this year of 00s. It is June, a wet rainy, slow starting summer. It has been so far a year of transitions, of passages. My mother died. A new baby granddaughter was born. Also for all of us in the AGO a time of mourning the loss of our good friend and fellow organist Marguerite Ziegler.

Marguerite was the first to welcome me into the Cleveland AGO. She asked me to serve on the Education Committee, which she chaired. Many remember Marguerite's warmth and interest in the progress of the careers of new members. I am inspired by Marguerite's undertaking the pursuit of a Master‰s Degree in Organ after she had retired from teaching school and of her obtaining Guild Degrees up to Associate. Those of us who attended last year's annual meeting at Euclid Avenue Congregational Church will remember Marguerite's beautiful playing to the Mendelssohn Sixth Sonata. Marguerite's deep faith and openness about her illness and passing will remain an inspiration to those who knew her.

Over Memorial Day weekend I was privileged to listen to auditions by our scholarship candidates. In addition to college students and one older student, we listened to two high school students. The students are very dedicated and talented. It was very gratifying to talk to the young students at the very beginning of their organ study. They spoke of their goals and of their dreams of being able to play the organ well.

Passages, moving from one stage of life to the next. They happen to all of us. I am in the middle generation. I have watched my mother pass on and the new baby born. We say goodbye to an older colleague and welcome a new one.

Life rolls on like a river.

Fern