When we first returned to Baltimore to live, I had to have a tooth pulled out one Sunday. I was in pain. We went to the Medical Arts Building downtown, to a dentist who happened to be there that day. His name was Dr. Dabrowski, and he had a little boy and a little girl that he loved. He was kind and a good dentist.

Afterwards, we waited for the #32 streetcar at a corner opposite a church. I looked up at the steeple, towering high and slender in the air, and said, "That almost reaches Heaven!" I stood there looking at it until the car came. The cornerstone said the church was made in 1763. It was very old.

When the strange incident occurred that brought Mommy into that church to sing, she often thought of that Sunday with me.

One summer day in June 1952, she started out for an audition at a Presbyterian Church. She had spoken to the secretary who had spoken to the choirmaster, who was to hear her sing. His name was Richard Ross.

It was on Park Avenue, and she drove down this pleasant old street in Baltimore in a leisurely way. She stopped driving when she saw the church on the corner with the steeple. "Well, this must be it!" And she got out of the car!

As she walked up the steps, a man jumped out of a decorator's truck. He walked up with her. "Is this the Brown Memorial Church?" she asked, feeling sure it was. "Yes, I believe so," he said. "Is Mr. Ross, the organist, there?" He said, "I think so!"

He rang the bell, and a pleasant lady opened the door. Mommy waited at the entrance while she spoke to the man standing there.

They talked about the color to be used in painting the entrance, then the lady said, "It's so very hot, won't you come into the study?" They all went in, and the two conducted and completed the discussion of the decorating of the manse.

As he left alone, the lady ran after him. "Isn't she with you?" she asked. "No," he said, "she asked for the organist. She wants to see him."

He left, and the lady returned. Mommy believed that she was the secretary who had arranged the appointment. Mommy asked, "Is Mr. Ross here?"

The lady said, "He is at the Brown Memorial Church."

"But this is the church, isn't it? The man said so." asked Mommy.

"No, this is the First Presbyterian Church. I am Mrs. Gardner, the minister's wife," she said.

Well, they began to talk. They had left the same town in Illinois that we had lived in for ten years, just as we went to live there. They had lost their beloved young son in the war.

Mommy was told to get in touch with the choirmaster, Miss Margaret P. Ingle, who summered in Massachusetts, and who later gave Mommy a position singing in the choir.

The first Sunday that she sang, she was terrified at being way up in the massive choir loft, overwhelmed by the new and great spiritual experience. Just think, singing to God in one of His churches! And singing all of the great happiness and gratitude for His gifts to her!

Being at this church under the guidance she had there and learning the wonderful heritage of music of the best composers of religious music, helped her to grow in spiritual strength as well as the weekly communion in the Episcopal Church.

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