LR, I did send a message to the person who formerly used the name Standing Bear here. His membership under that name is inactive now, but he does have another active one and I left him a message in the PMs there as well. He is not at Mudcat often but I am still hoping to locate him via e-mail.

If you know the melody and can get it to me somehow, I would be glad to write you some new verses to hold you till the ones you want come "home" to you. I could write them without the melody, but it would be better to have a sense of the feeling of it. Is it slow, fast, waltz, 4/4? You know, most of the old ones that were passed around by ear had lots of versions and verses, and people often made them up as they sang. So I think if you want to claim this song as yours and carry it forward, with new verses, it would be fine. Just think, you might be singing it someday, somewhere, and have someone come up to you who knows it well from long ago.

They tell the story on the Gaither Homecoming Hour how the author of NEVER GROW OLD turned up in the assembly all incognito at an all-day singing, and his old friend onstage was singing the song he'd sung for years. It had been so long since they last saw each other that the singer did not even recognize the author when he came onstage to sing it with him.

So I hope you WILL sing this, everywhere you can, and tell people what it meant to you, and how you connected through it to people all over the world by asking about it so persistently.

There is one more way to keep track of this thread, by the way. Look right at the bottom of the thread, by the box where you put your new post, where it says "ADD THREAD TO TRACER." Click it. That will automatically put a link to the thread on your personal page and you can always just click it back to life from there, or see if someone has posted a new post to it and maybe even found your song.

Do you think anyone from your mother's time and place would still be around to help you recall this song?

~Susan