I 'met' Helen at the National Folk Festival in 1975...even before I moved to Wash DC...we were both volunteers, serving sandwiches to performers under a tent on a hillside...but before that, I had heard her sing onstage at the Red Fox Inn, and knew I was in the presence of someone special!

Once I moved here, I saw Helen often, and was amazed how naturally she accepted ME and remembered and acknowleged me, even though I was just not anyone special.

And LORDY, how that lady could sing! One of my favorite memories is of going to a Bok, Trickett & Muir concert at Gaston Hall and hearing Ed Trickett explain that "...we learned this next song from Helen Schneyer, and we really wanted to do it just like she did it. We practiced and worked, but we just couldn't quite get it.....there were only three of us!"

Helen had a wicked sense of humor, but her greatest gift was her grace when the jokes and tricks were at her expense.

She also had an exquisite feel for the mood and occasion. She has told of doing a concert in, I believe, West Virginia and settling down to do one of her famous renditions of some maudlin old song...I believe it was "Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight".....and looking out into the audience and seeing an old fellow in overalls with little tears in his eyes....whereupon she told herself ..."I think we do this straight tonight!" Helen simply knew when it was right to milk one of those songs, and when it was not.

It was a great art Helen had, to both be a 'queen', and hold court and be a commanding presence, and still never seem like she was above anyone or excluding anyone....but she managed that art wonderfully.

Last night, Mary Cliff, on WETA, played parts of a concert Helen did last year, and I simply could not hold back the tears as Helen's voice, along with her friends, rose and swelled with the power of one of her signature songs: "Moonlight" (get the record..HEAR that song!)

"I know moonlight, I know starlight..
I laaayyyyy this body down...."

...rest easy, Helen