Musician, wife, traveller. Born July 31, 1906, in Toledo, Ohio. Died Dec. 13, 2002, in Dearborn, Mich., of cancer, aged 96.
Loretta's life was a testament to the ability of great-hearted people to love deeply, to suffer grievous loss and disappointment, and yet to have the courage and the good humour not to withdraw from life. To use an analogy Loretta would have liked, she knew how to accept with good grace the cards she was dealt, and to come back ready for a new hand without hesitation or self-pity.
To understand the story of Loretta's life you have to consider her four great loves.
The first was music. From her very earliest days, she knew that she had a musical gift, both for song and the piano. She would have dearly loved to have made a career in music, but she got no support from her family. They saw it as no fit career, and in those days, there were few scholarship opportunities.
She gave up on music as a profession, and went out to work as her family wished, distinguishing herself in the railroad and insurance industries. But in her spare time she reached for that level of musical professionalism after which her heart yearned all her days.
Her second love was an Irish Catholic from near Stratford, Ont., Joe McKeown. She and Joe married after the war. She loved him so much that she gave up her German Protestant tradition and converted, despite some family misgivings on both sides. They never succeeded in having children, although not for lack of trying. After Joe retired, they moved to Florida. Within a few years, Joe was dead.
Desolate and alone, Loretta nonetheless maintained her musical activities and contacts and her many friendships. Soon, however, a relative put her in touch with a retired dentist and former mayor of Windsor, Ont., Lee Crowley. Lee had just lost his wife, Peg, also a gifted singer and musician and an elegant charming woman in many ways reminiscent of Loretta.
Lee paid Loretta a visit and the rest, as they say, is history. They built a brand new home in Boca Raton and moved in to share several happy years together.
One of the first things they did was to buy a brand new Mercedes and do a North American tour. They drove for months -- and at this time Lee was in his late 80s and Loretta was almost 70. Lee's driver's licence had long since expired; he talked his way out of several tickets on that grand romantic odyssey on the continent's highways.
Like so many of her other loves, Loretta was fated to lose this one, too; Lee died in 1984. She stayed on for a while in Florida but increasingly felt the pull of old friends and old places, as well as a growing awareness of her advancing age. She flew north, found a place that would look after her until her death, and soon afterwards sold her car. She accepted gracefully the constraints of aging and was always resolute and clear-eyed in facing them.
Her new home also brought her together with her last love, Fred Mans, a courtly charming widower who lived just down the corridor. While they never shared an apartment, they shared just about everything else. Like Joe and Lee before him, Fred fell hard for the proud, well-groomed and playful Loretta.
They had several good years together until Loretta once again felt the curse of the long-lived: to see fall too many of those they have known and loved.
Not many of us can say that they stared down bitter loss and disappointment as often as Loretta, and yet never lost the ability to laugh, to love and to enjoy music and friends. Not many of us have fixed death with such a steely eye and prepared for his final arrival with such calm matter-of-factness, while not becoming preoccupied with death, but rather with life. And few of us will be missed as much.
Loretta was Brian's step-grandmother.