Subject: RE: Obit: Sad News - Frank Harte (June 2005)
From:
GUEST,Sally Burnell
Date: 01 Aug 05 - 05:24 PM
I knew Frank from the many years that he taught at Irish Week at the Augusta Heritage Arts Center at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, WV. I spent many evenings on the porch of Halliehurst Mansion with him singing into the wee, wee hours of the night/morning.
It was a privilege and an honour to know such a larger-than-life and yet very humble man who sang songs of the struggle of the common man. He was a towering figure in the world of songs, one we always went to when we needed to learn new ones. His knowledge of songs and history was encyclopaedic, one never tired of hearing him explain how songs and Irish history were so indelibly linked.
This past week, at Irish Week at Augusta, we paid tribute to our late friend and mentor. It was bittersweet, both funny and sad, with songs sung and music played that he loved. Tears were shed, and we left Frank's chair on the porch empty in tribute to him at the evening "seisiúns". We did, however, very much feel his spirit among us, and so, all of us who knew him, who learned songs from him, are his legacy. It is up to us to keep singing those songs and to share them with others, as he very much would have wanted us to do.
I loved this man, regarded him as a mentor, a friend and something of a musical father figure. I'll deeply miss him, but two songs I have written have a bit of Frank in them, and so I carry him on in what I am doing. Frank, you were one of a kind. I'm grateful to have gotten to know you over the space of so many years. Thanks for the songs, the memories, the stories, the laughter, the tears, the "craic".
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sj
