Tomorrow at the Sunday service at Nuuanu Congregational Church, I’ll be playing a hymn I’ve never heard of before … and you’ll never guess what the tune name is? It’s KATHERINE. For some reason, the church always puts my name next to the hymn name, so this is how it’s listed in the bulletin:

Weird, right?!

Church musicians refer to hymns by their tune names, because the same tune may have different lyrics in different hymnals. You can find the tune name, usually in all capital letters, at the bottom of the hymn.

So seeing my name on subsequent lines is quite strange! Especially when it’s the same spelling!

If you do a search on this hymn tune, you’ll find that the melody was written by Al Carmines, an off-off-Broadway composer:

Reverend Alvin Allison “Al” Carmines, Jr. (July 25, 1936 – August 9, 2005) was a key figure in the expansion of Off-Off-Broadway theatre in the 1960s.

Carmines was born in Hampton, Virginia. Although his musical talent appeared early, he decided to enter the ministry, attending Swarthmore College, majoring in English and philosophy, and then Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, earning a bachelor of divinity in 1961 and a master of sacred theology in 1963.

Carmines was hired by Howard Moody as an assistant minister at Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square Park, New York, to found a theater in the sanctuary of the Greenwich Village church in conjunction with playwright Robert Nichols. He began composing in 1962 and acted as well. His Bible study group grew into the Rauschenbusch Memorial United Church of Christ, with Carmines as pastor.

Carmines taught at Union Theological Seminary and received the Vernon Rice Award for his performance and the Drama Desk Award for Lyrics and Music and was awarded the Obie award for Life Time Achievements.

Carmines is perhaps best remembered in the church for the hymn “Many Gifts, One Spirit” #114 in the United Methodist Hymnal. He was commissioned by the United Methodist Women to write this hymn for their General Assembly in 1974.

Carmines’ musicals reflected his eclectic interests, including: Abraham Lincoln, Christmas, Gertrude Stein, Aristophanes, Winnie the Pooh, gay relationships, and St. Joan.

Carmines found as much spiritual meaning in the theater as the church: “If you want to know how to live, go to church. If you want to know how your life is in its deepest roots, go to the theater.”

—en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

I found this interesting tidbit in his obituary in the New York TImes:

Clive Barnes, writing in The New York Times in 1973, called Mr. Carmines “the composer of more musicals than almost any man now alive” and went on to suggest that his “ease and daring” were matched only by Stephen Sondheim’s.

Mr. Carmines dared to adapt Aristophanes to a minstrel setting, set to music the sayings of chairman Mao and ignited a firestorm among gay men in 1973 with a musical entitled “The Faggot.” In one Judson production, nudity was made more interesting by commingling it with raw fish and sausages.

Interesting, yes?

Not too long ago, when I was at the reunion of my husband’s cousins and sister last September, all of us ladies were in our 70s and older. (Yikes!) What was so remarkable was that we realized that people don’t name their daughters what our parents named us! Names like Marie, Marian, or Marjory, or Sharon, or Carol or Carlene. And although I do hear of girls being named Katherine, if you encounter a Kathy, it’s generally a woman of a certain age (ahem!).

I once asked my mother why I had my name, and she said I was named after a little girl who fell down a well. When I was doing research for my high school class’s 50th reunion, I found out it was Kathy Fiscus.

It happened on April 8, 1949 in San Marino, California. Kathy Fiscus was only 3 years old, and she fell down a 120′ deep water well that was only 14” wide. A nationwide media circus ensued in the desperate attempt to save her life. According to a Wikipedia article, news of the round-the-clock drilling was covered not only in local and national newspapers, but also radio and television, a new medium at the time. It apparently was considered a landmark event in television history.

Unlike Jessica McClure who fell into a well in the late 1980s, the story for Kathy Fiscus did not end happily, and rescuers found her dead body two days later.

And that’s why in my high school class, we had over 20 girls named Kathy or Cathy!

Why Al Carmines named his hymn tune KATHERINE is a mystery. Was it named after a sister, relative or friend? In all honesty, it’s not a great tune, as you will hear below: