I'm compelled to print my paraphrase of the story Gerry told at the Gebhard Woods Dulcimer Festival in Morris, Illinois a couple of weeks ago. She was so open about her impending death that it was awe inspiring---for me anyhow. I just sent this to Rich Warren as he wanted reminiscences of Jerry from me for his memorial to her that he is writing for SING OUT! On stage that beautiful afternoon in Morris, Gerry was working out her attitude towards death. She pulled no punches. Told about her mastectomy and about finding out she had cancer in all the lymph nodes. But being influenced by folklore and tales (some undoubtedly from Joseph Campbell), she saw all of the hard times in one's life as DRAGONS that had to be confronted and fought. From loss of a parent to childbirth to the loss of her husband to alzheimer's to hardships of any kind---illness, even the prospect of death! These were all dragons that had to be bested. And then she realized that, as she vanquished every one of them, one by one, they seemed to lose their power over her. She saw that they weren't really dragons. They were benign.

The last dragon was the angel of death. And saying that, she thought, "If it's an angel, it simply cannot be a bad thing!" Also, she saw that all of the dragon's she had fought in her life had, on being faced squarely, turned into angels. So, in the end, she had no fear of death! It was just a part of life---a thing to be, if not embraced, thought of as a final adventure leading wherever it leads.

Then Gerry sang "SUNDOWN"---a song that I've recorded twice after learning it from George and Gerry Armstrong at the Frank Proffitt memorial concert at the Old Town School OF FOLK MUSIC in 1966 (I think). I sure never had those words mean as much to me as they meant right then. George & Gerry had learned "SUNDOWN" from Paul Clayton who had learned it from Bascom Lamar Lunsford---and I tought it to Cindy Mangsen. We truly are links on the chain...

Hi, my little darling,
Smile upon your face,
Gonna buy a ribbon bow
To tie around your waist.

chorus) It's nearly sundown, sundown,
The sun is almost down,
I'm bound away to leave you
Before the sun goes down,
It's nearly sundown, sundown,
The sun is almost down.

The roads, they are muddy,
The mountains, they are steep,
I'm bound to see my darling,
Before I get to sleep.

Well, hi, my little darling,
Meet me at the gate;
I want to kiss you one more time,
Before it gets too late.

Hi, my little darling,
Meet me at the door,
I'm bound away to leave you,
Unto some foreign shore.

It's nearly sundown,
The sun is almost down...

Love,

Art Thieme