|
"A small-town farewell
for the world's 'girl singer':
Fans, family pay tribute to
Rosemary Clooney"
By John Kiesewetter and Janelle Gelfand, The Cincinnati
Enquirer, July 6, 2002
MAYSVILLE — Rosemary Clooney's friends from
New York to Hollywood gathered in this tiny Ohio River town Friday to
say their final farewell to the Grammy winning singer and movie star.
Townspeople began lining up outside St. Patrick's
Church at 6 a.m., four hours before the funeral, to pay respects to
the “girl singer” whose dreams, said her brother Nick, took
her “from Maysville to Singapore, and all points in between.”
Ms. Clooney, 74, one of the greatest interpreters
of American song and Bing Crosby's co-star in White Christmas, died
last Saturday at her Beverly Hills home after a six-month battle with
lung cancer.
Her death came four months after the recording
industry gave her its highest honor, a Lifetime Achievement Award. It
was the singer's first Grammy in a 57-year career that began in
Cincinnati, when the blond Maysville teenager and her younger sister
Betty began singing on WLW radio.
The closed-casket service was in the 100-year-old
St. Patrick's Church, graced with more than two dozen floral
bouquets, many with roses. Cooling fans were set up and drinking
water was available in the back of the church, which is not air-conditioned.
The overflow crowd of about 800 was a mixture of
relatives, friends, fans, movie stars, Cincinnati entertainers, at
least one of her Mayo Clinic doctors and several nationally known
musical figures who were influenced by her long career.
“We come to the place she knew well, three
blocks from her big, slow, muddy river ... to mourn days we will not
share with her, and to celebrate the days we did,” Nick Clooney
said in a brief eulogy at the conclusion of the Mass. “Let me do
something I never would have presumed to do a week ago — speak
for Rosemary. My sister would like to thank all of you.”
Then he turned to the coffin and said, “I have
avoided saying two words we have all come here to say, some of us
from so far: Goodbye Rosemary.”
"She was amazing"
They came from all over to say goodbye for
different reasons.
“Since I was a little girl, watching White
Christmas over and over, I just adored her. She was so down-to-earth.
She didn't let celebrity go to her head,” said Dee Dee Denton
from Cynthiana, who got up at 4:30 a.m. Friday to make the 45-minute
drive to Maysville. Ms. Denton also attended Ms. Clooney's 1997
wedding to Dante DiPaolo in the church.
Also arriving early from Cincinnati was Eileen
Krause, who had seen Ms. Clooney perform at Riverbend Music Center
and on television.
“I never got to meet her,” said Mrs.
Krause, of Pleasant Ridge. “This is the closest I'm ever going
to get to her — until I get to heaven.”
Betty Russell of Lexington, wanted to be there
because of a 50-year-old memory. “I had lunch with her 50 years
ago, when she opened the tobacco season in Lexington,” she said.
“I can still see her in her full-length mink coat, singing
"Come On-a My House.'”
Standing a few dozen people behind her was Dr. Dana
Thompson of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who had assisted in
surgery there eight weeks ago to help restore Ms. Clooney's singing
voice. She said Ms. Clooney had hoped to sing again, as soon as Sept.
28, for the Fourth Annual Rosemary Clooney Music Festival here.
In the hospital, Ms. Clooney had impressed the
doctor with her spirit.
“She was amazing, always talking to people no
matter how sick she was, trying to make sure everyone around her was
enjoying the day,” she said.
Dr. Thompson, who trained for two years at
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, said she “had a
real bond with her.”
“We'd talk about Graeter's ice cream and
cheese coneys. ... She would hum things to me and say, "Look,
Dr. Dana, my voice is back.'”
A mother's advice
The service was a traditional Mass of Christian
burial, with a half-hour musical prelude that included “Ave
Maria.” The communion hymn, “On Eagle's Wings,'' was
personally selected by Ms. Clooney. The family also chose
""Panis Angelicus” because it was “the one that I
know she loved,” her brother said.
Mr. DiPaolo, seated in the first pew, was often
comforted by singer Debby Boone, married to Gabriel Ferrer, Ms.
Clooney's son. She entered church at his side.
“He just looked overwhelmed, walking in, right
on the same stairs where he'd just — it seems like yesterday
— gotten married,” Ms. Boone said.
Gabriel Ferrer, who read two scripture passages,
said he relied on his mother's advice to get through the moment.
“When my mother sang at Debby's and my
wedding, she said it was one of the hardest things she ever did,”
he said. “She said she had to keep thinking of the Ohio River
... and that's how she got through it. You just go to another place
where you can't almost personalize it.”
Final tribute
The crowd of more than 100 outside the church was
quiet and respectful when the 10 pallbearers — sons, grandsons
and nephew George Clooney — appeared with the coffin after the
service. As the procession of more than two dozen cars wound through
the streets to St. Patrick Cemetery in nearby Old Washington, people
paused to pay a final tribute. Ms. Clooney was buried on a rolling
hill sloping down to the river valley, in the shade of trees with a
weathered barn in the distance.
It was a moment Michael Feinstein, a singer,
pianist and Ms. Clooney's former Beverly Hills neighbor, will never forget.
“The most moving experience that I had today
was to see all the people lining the streets in the procession to the
cemetery, to see everybody stopping their work, little children
holding flowers, and all of the police officers standing at
attention,” Mr. Feinstein said. “I'll never forget that.”
Actor Miguel Ferrer, the oldest of Ms. Clooney's
five children, was impressed that so many came and showed “so
much support and love,” he said. The actor (RoboCop, Crossing
Jordan) recalled how he and his siblings enjoyed summers with their
mother in Maysville.
“We would come and spend every summer here.
Either someone would rent a house or we'd be at grandmother's
farm,” he said. “It's incredible. Every time I'd come back
here, it's like I'm coming home. It's such a part of my life.”
Miguel and his brothers and sisters, and their
children, flew in from Los Angeles for the service.
Among others who came to Maysville were jazz singer
and pianist Diana Krall; Kathryn Crosby, widow of Bing; and actors Al
Pacino and Beverly D'Angelo. All were frequently in the audience when
Ms. Clooney headlined at New York's Rainbow & Stars nightclub and
Feinstein's at the Regency. Ms. D'Angelo, whose father once played
bass in Tony Pastor's orchestra, had a special bond with Ms. Clooney,
who toured with the orchestra shortly after her 1945 debut on WLW-AM.
Many struggled with the realization that Ms.
Clooney was gone.
“It hasn't hit me yet that she's not going to
walk out on the stage ever again,” said John Oddo, her music
director of 18 years, who had flown in from New York. “What I've
learned from her I will try to pass onto other younger singers that I
work with. I already find myself saying, what would Rosemary Clooney
do in this situation?
Nephew George Clooney, the ER and movie star who
slept on the floor of his aunt's home while trying to break into show
business in the early 1980s, tried to deflect attention from himself
most of Friday.
At a reception in nearby Augusta after the service,
he stayed inside a house with family instead of mingling with the
public gathered under a tent until after reporters had left. He
declined an interview, simply saying: “She was a great lady.”
Also attending the service were Maysville native
and former Miss America Heather French Henry, the wife of Kentucky
Lt. Gov. Steve Henry; Cincinnati TV singers Colleen Sharp Murray,
Mary Ellen Tanner and Nancy James; newsmen Walt Maher and Don Herman;
producer Dick Murgatroyd; and musicians Lee Stolar and John Von Ohlen.
“She was always fascinated that Cincinnati had
so many girl singers,” said Mrs. Murray.
“I will miss her as one of my mentors,”
said Ms. Tanner, who sang at the reception. “We always kept in
touch. With Rosemary, its was always like talking to a girlfriend.”
Ms. Clooney kept coming back to Kentucky partly
because she loved the Ohio River, said her biographer Joan Barthel,
who helped her write Girl Singer (Broadway Books; $14.95) in 1999.
“She had a great connection with the
river,” Ms. Barthel said. “At the end of the book, she
says, she knows she can always follow the river safely home."
Ms. Clooney's passing leaves a void, Mr. Oddo said.
“She and Tony (Bennett) were the only two left
of that generation and that stature and that kind of talent still
singing. Tony's the only one left now,” he said.
As Nick Clooney prepared for her funeral Friday
morning, he played some of his sister's recordings.
“I still feel her presence when I listen to
her albums,” he said. “And I have a little conversation
with her.”
He said plans are being made to add Rosemary's
songs to a musical clock tower in Augusta, where the singer owned a
home overlooking the Ohio River.
“I believe, unlike most of us, that people
will be talking about Rosemary Clooney 50 years from now, or 75 years
from now — as they do about Bing Crosby or Al Jolson,” Nick
Clooney said.
|