Sunday afternoon I spoke a few words about the late Mary Ellen MacGlaughlin, co-director off Amery’s Northern Lakes Center for the Arts. To me, she had so many facets to her life that she was like a finely cut diamond. Which facet does one start with?
Mary Ellen loved teaching piano to kids and when LaMoine, her husband, fed up with battling bureaucracies in his job with a community development agency, saw how his wife could set her own schedule and that she was having a satisfying, enjoyable time, figured that could be a better life. The result: the Northern Lakes Center for the Arts, a teaching and performance space housed in a former church building that had become an auto parts store. I did a piece for the St.Paul Pioneer Press that appeared in January, 2014. In that piece, the focus was on the Center’s more than three decades in the black–an unusual record for an arts organization of any size. I didn’t give Mary Ellen enough credit. The two of them had a plan but it took both of them to work that plan.
The Center had several instruction spaces, as well as the central performance space that housed a chamber orchestra nicely but was intimate enough so that a big name like Gordon Bok declared that it was his favorite venue in the nation. The chamber orchestra was likely the only chamber orchestra in the country in a town of fewer than 3,000 people. Mary Ellen played cello in the orchestra, but the prelude to her cello playing was her selling tickets at the door box office–she knew most people that came through the door because she had been pounding the pavement soliciting donations to help support the Center–and handling the stage lighting. Later, Mary Ellen sold the ads for the Center’s newspaper. She and LaMoine would play a Mozart piece for four hands that Mozart and his sister had played, pulling it off as a demonstration of how Mary Ellen’s teaching could pay off. The orchestra included players of all ages, from kids to senior citizens.
The Center used its wall space to display work by quilters and visual artists. Writers could meet to share their works and read them to audiences, who also received a printed publication, “Soundings”, that included their writing. Christmas concerts included audience participation singing and the Lou Jappe installed pipe organ, as well as seasonal readings. Shakespeare would have enjoyed seeing some of his works performed in the Center’s space, as well as plays by Moliere.
After mentioning so many facets of Mary Ellen’s contributions, not to mention her three successful daughters, several of LaMoine’s published love poems spelled out how he felt about his many-faceted wife.
Many facets. Step back and one finds a beautiful jewel. Because of who Mary Ellen was and how she was, and because some facet, and perhaps many, touched the lives of so many people, many of who gathered last Sunday, we can thank her and thank God for her time among us. Because of who she was and how she was, our little worlds have been better.