A sidebar1 on our Boston hospitality. Old Paris companion Gordon (“Bar-Jonas The Whale”) Jones and his friend Jim Green came from New York (Columbia) and stayed overnight with us on Beacon Street, by the courtesy of our young neighbors in the basement front (who were spending the weekend in Albany). We had six tickets, you see, for a performance of medieval ensemble music by the New York Pro Musica under Noah Greenberg. Great seats: we actually sat behind the musicians at the back of the Sanders Theater stage. Where we could see and appreciate Greenberg,2 the genius behind this group and also behind much of the recent revival of interest in ancient music.
This was the first time Gordon had seen Elaine McMeen, since the three of us had served together on the Mission Staff. As handsome young folks, sharing a second-floor office in a very beautiful place, they had been strongly attracted to each other. But as well-behaved missionaries, they’d agreed that they’d get home and settled and then see what would happen. Elaine was living on Lee Street in Cambridge; her roommate Susan Harrison came with us as Jim Green’s date.
We enjoyed the evening vastly. Oh—you’re wondering about the sequel for our friends? Well, Gordon and Susan are happy grandparents, these days. He’s still active on the community stage in Draper, Utah. And still the same brilliant, thoughtful, irrepressible “Bar-Jonas” we loved in Paris. Elaine is Mrs Lawrence Flake; she tells me they have eight kids and 28 grandkids. How life does go on.
1It’s a sidebar, because I can’t find any photos of the occasion.
2We couldn’t know that he would die unexpectedly, only about a year later, leaving the early-music revival in the hands of a whole ’nother generation.
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