I’m going to miss you tons Mary Lou but you will always be in my heart. I have such great memories of us together sharing a room at contest and tears rolling down our face from all of our laughter. We had such great times. I miss you.

Love

Donna

In memory of Mrs. Mary Lou Kerr

The first time I met Mary Lou was when she came back to the rehearsal after her husband passed away. Everybody was trying to greet her and hug her. I came to her and introduced myself to her and gave her a hug as well. She said that she really appreciated my greeting to her.

I got to know her better through a funny situation. We were to perform at a special event. I dressed up “as instructed”: black shirt, black pants and shoes without showing the toes and heels. I showed up with black shirt, black pants and shoes covering toes and heels. However, I did not realize that I needed to wear black shoes! Instead, I wore a pair brand new shoes brown not black, because I didn’t see the word “black” in front of shoes! I was so embarrassed and upset with myself. Then I tried to see whether I could find somebody who was willing to swap shoes with me. Fortunately, Mary Lou’s sister was in town visiting and she came to cheer for us. Ah ha! she had a pair of black shoes on! I went to talk to her sister and asked for help and we swapped the shoes quickly, that solved all my problems! Since then, whenever Mary Lou and I saw each other at the rehearsal, we talked like old friends.

I admired her at her positive attitude and amazed at her beautiful singing. She was a good friend and I will remember her as long as my memory stays.

Pauline Zhao

Condolences to Mary Lou’s family who have had to say goodbye to their shining light. I know for a fact that Mary Lou treasured you all and so appreciated all the care and attention showered on her.

Cynthia’s remembrance is a wonderful recollection of all that had been Mary Lou in our singing life. I think the twinkle in her eye after she continued to talk out of synch prevented her from getting into trouble with the Director (who was quite the task master, I am learning). Mary Lou’s ready smile and quick wit always made us all laugh as we worked toward whatever goal we had set.

She always offered to do any job that she thought she could handle, and she never missed a step in the execution. Occasionally, speaking of steps, she would go left rather than right and then pandemonium would erupt.

Now that I have read the previous messages I realize why Mary Lou was one of our more senior members in the Chorus who adapted to the changeover to Computer communication. I would often call her for advice as we were both Mac users and could share education. Mary Lou caught on very quickly.

During Covid times she avidly joined into our impromptu Monday afternoon chit chat. This was a special time for me as it was designed for outside communication for those impacted by the isolation of that ridiculous virus. We didn’t sing, we didn’t warble and we didn’t even talk about Chorus. We just chatted away 2 hours of precious sharing time. I was honored to share time with this marvelous group of women who allowed me into their inner sanctum. One day, just for fun we had bring your pet to sharing!! I can’t remember Mary Lou’s cats’ name but after family, he/she was the love of Mary Lou’s life.

If we can believe that Heaven is a place full of all the people we like then I’m sure Mary Lou is off to crack a few jokes with a lot of good friends. Enjoy the next Journey Mary Lou. And by the way, the Password is Chrysanthemum!! Hugs to all who grieve your departure.

Susan McLean (Past Director)

Memories of Mary Lou Kerr

I joined Chinook Winds Chorus in the fall of 2004. About one year later I was approached by Mary Lou and Laura Wright, who asked me if I would like to sing in a quartet with them. I said I would try, and we asked Ruth Roberts to sing lead with us. Mary Lou sang bass, Laura sang baritone, Ruth Roberts sang lead, and I sang tenor. We chose a name for the quartet, BRIO, and practiced a song for the Christmas party. We were terrible. But the crowd encouraged us to keep going. We kept going.

Ruth dropped out after about a year, and eventually we found a new lead in Merle Bumstead. Getting to know these women was a Joy. We laughed a lot, because Mary Lou and Laura both had deep senses of humour. Laura had a dry wit, and Mary Lou found something funny in everything. Mary Lou rewrote words to songs to make them funny. She wrote emcee lines for our performances, and they were always funny. We practiced once a week, usually at Mary Lou’s house. We hired coaches to help us with our quartet skills, and we even hired an arranger to arrange a song especially for us – Let Him Go, Let Him Tarry. It was Mary Lou’s idea to get this song arranged, and as far as I know, we are the only quartet who performed it. The four of us tried to find performance opportunities, and we found ourselves singing in Mary Lou’s dentist office and other places.

In the quartet we shared life stories, life events and learned many things about each other. I was honored to be invited to Mary Lou and George’s fiftieth anniversary party in their back yard. The yard at their Acadia house was always beautiful, full of blossoms and the perfect birch trees. Mary Lou was proud to point out the iron fence and other features that George had created. She was devastated when George was diagnosed with cancer, and tried everything she could to ease his suffering. He was missed by Mary Lou, and all of us who knew him. We tried to comfort each other during sorrowful times, and celebrate with each other when our children and grandchildren did something great.

Mary Lou was very proud of her family and she loved them deeply. We rehearsed in the basement of her house, and were surrounded by paintings Tom made. Some were useful for our rehearsal – we focused on a beautiful scene Tom painted when we sang “Wonderful World”.

When Laura left the chorus, we asked Jean Smith, Maja Weibe, the Chorus Director, and then Susan Strem, my daughter to sing baritone. All of them sang with us for a short time. We asked Dorothy McGillawee to sing baritone with us. She said yes, and we really picked up our practice time. I travelled to the quartet practices with Dorothy and loved getting to know her better too.

When we needed a new quartet name, we chose Acadia, because most of our quartet rehearsals were held at Mary Lou’s house in Acadia, and that was the title on the bus we saw in the neighbourhood. We found ourselves drawn to “Irish” flavoured music, singing Christmas in Killarney, Let Him Go, and were working on Galway Bay when the pandemic hit. We carried on with virtual rehearsals, singing one at a time at zoom rehearsals. One person sings, and the others mute themselves and sing with that person’s voice. It was tedious, but it kept us going. And we got to have a weekly visit.

We were working on a new song, You’ve Got a Friend in Me, and decided to make a video of a virtual performance for the first virtual contest in 2020. The in-person contest had been cancelled for the pandemic. There was no scoring that year, just sharing. We got positive feedback for our efforts, and I sent a link of our video to McInnis and Holloway. Perhaps you viewed it.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1c69tlt9kghvxcy9cmx64/Acadia-Friend.mp4?rlkey=7n3jjry4mx7kyiv5xdl9ujc71&st=qj5qjbud&dl=0

During the pandemic, there were many changes to our lives, and one change was that all rehearsals were being held by zoom. We were happy that Mary Lou’s sister, Carol, could join us for chorus rehearsals from the east coast. We began to notice that Mary Lou was having trouble learning her music and would get worried about things that in the past would have made her laugh. The quartet wound down, and we haven’t found a new bass. Mary Lou was irreplaceable.

With much love,

Cynthia

BONUS:

These are some jokes Acadia Quartet used for a Christmas performance:

If you see a fat man who’s jolly and cute,

Wearing a beard and a red flannel suit,

And if he is chuckling and laughing away,

While flying around in a miniature sleigh,

With eight tiny reindeer to pull him along,

Then let’s face it… your eggnog’s too strong!

Mary Lou: That Paddy O’Rouark is so full of blarney.

Merle: What’s he up to now?

Mary Lou: Yesterday he wanted to take his car for a service, but couldn’t get it in the church door!

Merle: I found out why he keeps buying mothballs every other day.

Mary Lous: Why does he need so many mothballs?

Merle: He says those little moths are very hard to hit!

Cynthia: My Irish boyfriend has been away in Dublin at University. He just got his BA.

Dorothy: Well, good for him – now he needs the other 24 letters, and maybe he can get them in the right order this time!

Cynthia: My boyfriend’s mother just had a terrible accident while ironing the curtains.

Dorothy: What happened?

Cynthia: She fell out of the window! Last week we had to recue her from the kitchen sink.

Dorothy: When is she going to realize she is too old for tap-dancing?

Mary Lou: “Good times, good friends, good health to you,

And the Luck of the Irish in all that you do.”