Comments about ‘Sing farewell: Bittersweet moment for choir members’

Thanks to all of you for the years of sharing your talents with the world and with the Lord. You've delighted us and made us proud. We know your successors will keep up the high standards you and all Choir members have always set because that's just what the Tabernacle Choir does!

Too bad that there's a mandatory requirement for the Tabernacle Choir. My Great Grandpa sang in the Tabernacle for 27 years and death is what retired him. That was back in the 1920's. G-grandpa
was an immigrant form England

It's sad that the Choir members of today have to face mandatory retirement. That was not always the case in the Choir's history. Believe that policy began in the late 1970's. It's great to get new voices, but the "old developed ones" are good too.

My Great Grandpa, who immigrated to America and to Salt Lake City in the 1880's, sang in the
choir for 27 years. He sang up to his final months
of his life so they said at his funeral service. He died in the late 1920's

Of course the choir wasn't as big then and they needed all the willing people who were willing to put their voices to the wheel (figuratively speaking).

Grandma, who also sang in the choir as a teenager,
said the basic requirement, then, was to be willing to come to all the practices with a serious attitude. She sang in the Choir from 1913 to 1916
until she got married. Her brother sang in the Choir too. In fact he was part of the Choir that sang at Woodrow Wilson's Presidental Inaguration.

Hope this segment of family history get posted.

Today is Grandma's Birthday.

She's not with us anymore. She was Born
on May 5, 1895. Roughly 2 years after the Sal Lake Temple was dedicated and 1 year before Utah became a State! She died in 1965.

I have compassion for those who are retired from the choir; however, it does give other members of the Church that want to be in the choir a better chance of enjoying sharing their talents to the world for the Savior.