Finis! A few words remembering Elsie
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ELSIE von Maur, the grande dame of music in the Quad-Cities, was one of those people who are expected to live forever. She died Monday at 106, reluctantly, I would suppose. Only a week ago, she had her hair done. Beyond the lofty tributes being offered, Elsie was a woman of great wit and fun … always good for a column.
Here are a few snippets of what I’ve written of her through years of friendship. It all keeps coming back like a song.
“Anyone who celebrates birthdays has holes in their heads,” she said, speaking at a party on her 90th birthday.
Once, while playing Scrabble with Elsie, I accused her of cheating. She coldly stared me down: “Never mind, I’m older than you, and do what I want.”
Last January, four principals from Opera Quad-Cities came to Elsie’s big house to sing selections of “Rigoletto” to her. “We knew she couldn’t make it to ‘Rigoletto,’ so we brought the opera to her,” said Ron May, the maestro.
“This is just like I’m at the Met,” she exclaimed, turning up her hearing aid to sing along to “La donna mobile.”
“When I was a student at Augie, I ushered for the Sunday afternoon Quad-City Symphony concerts at Centennial Hall,” said May. “It was our strict orders never to close the doors until Elsie arrived. When she arrived, the concert could begin.”
On the evening when she was 104, the von Maurs had dinner for the clan, serving Elsie’s favorite, Papa Murphy’s pizza, on paper plates. The next day I came calling. Her chalky white hair was everlastingly high in a bouffant. I kissed her forehead and said, “Elsie, you’re beautiful as always.”
She replied, with a tug on my bow tie, “You’re looking pretty sharp yourself, kid.”
“I used to be a pretty good pianist,” she once confided, “but I knew when to quit. William Primrose, a good friend and probably the world’s greatest violist, once told me to quit playing before they ask you to quit.”
“How can anyone be bored with life when there is sunlight,” she said one day when we visited on her sunporch. “I was an eastern girl when Dick (her husband) pursued me to marry him. When I told relatives that I was going to Iowa, they were shocked. They thought this was a place of cowboys and Indians.”
Her first words after coming out of surgery at 100 were, “How soon will I be able to swim again?” She had fallen down the steps in the middle of the night. She lay on the floor from 4 until 9 a.m., a spiral break of the femur in her right leg and a broken wrist.
At 102, she was still playing bridge three times a week and had more master’s points than anyone of her age in the world.
On Dec. 7, 1941, Elsie launched the playing of the “Star Spangled Banner” before a symphony performance. On that Pearl Harbor Sunday, the audience — still reeling over the news of the attack —did not applaud when the anthem was over. There has never been applause since when the symphony opens a concert with the national anthem.
Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com. Comment on this column at qctimes.com.
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