The Golden Thread

In Greek mythology, Ariadne gave Theseus a ball of golden thread, which he unraveled as he navigated the dark labyrinth. Theseus followed the golden thread backward, which led him to safety.

The modern usage of the term usually refers to the golden thread as a core, or a guiding light. In our family, the golden thread leads to the life work of a person whose influence has only grown since her untimely passing nearly 40 years ago.

Many of you in this community know my father, Chris Bird, who has been a grocery man since he was a teenager. You still see him at Super Foods on occasion. My dad came from a family of six siblings. All of them are great people in their own way. There were two 1940s-era brothers, and two 1960s-era sisters – but my dad was part of a brother-sister pairing in the 1950s. His closest sibling was named Lynn Bird and she was, for lack of a better term, a musical prodigy.

I didn’t know this until many years later, but Lynn was the organist at Eastern Hills Baptist Church and played for Gene and Linda Lawrence’s wedding. Many years later, I would work for Gene at Super Foods. Lynn and Linda were friends in their teen years and even rode horses together – another fact I wouldn’t know until recent times.

Aunt Lynn became very interested in music as a member of the choral department at Robert E. Lee High School. In fact, she enrolled in the very first music theory class offered at Lee High, taught by the legendary band director Mr. Tom Borden. Mr. Borden was the band director there when I was little and we could hear the mighty Lee Band practicing in the afternoons from our nearby home.

Lynn became the first person from our family to attend college. She went to the University of Montevallo to study music performance. My father, by this time working in a grocery store, would send his earnings to his sister to help her pay for school. Lynn had become a professional on piano and organ, and had a beautiful singing voice. She married Jerry Bailey, and the two of them began their professional lives in Selma, Alabama, serving at First Baptist Church. The senior pastor there in the 1970s was Dr. Henry Lyon III – if the name sounds familiar, his father Dr. Henry Lyon II was the pastor of Highland Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery during the Civil Rights era.

Lynn was more than just proficient at piano and organ. Her showcase piece was “Toccata” by French composer Charles-Marie Widor. An organist needs all of their fingers and toes to handle the virtuosity of that piece, with the number of notes thrown on the page along with the prescribed tempo. We had a recording of this selection that we used to listen to, and thrilled to hear Lynn playing it in person.

My aunt Lynn and uncle Jerry lived in a beautiful home on Mabry Street in Selma, and they started a family. For a time, our family also lived in Selma on Summerfield Road when my father was transferred to the Winn-Dixie store in Selma. After a few years, Lynn and Jerry moved on to the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary to earn Master’s Degrees, which led them eventually to a church in Mableton, Georgia. Unfortunately, Lynn became very sick with cancer and passed away when she was only in her 30s, leaving Uncle Jerry and my four cousins.

The Golden Thread didn’t necessarily show up at first, but Lynn wasn’t the only one to attend Montevallo. My aunt Kim Bird (Urquhart) received her music degree from Montevallo, and later, my sister Meredith Bird (Milstead) did as well. Whenever you see or hear the BirdKids performing on stages or at churches in Tallassee, I guarantee it would never have been possible without the Golden Thread that leads back to Meredith, Kim, and Lynn.

Had my aunt Kim not taken band with Mr. Lavone DuBose (who served at Tallassee High School for a number of years), and then recommended it to me, I definitely would not have signed up for band. And without band, I wouldn’t have learned about the tremendous legacy of the Robert E. Lee Band and its founding director, Dr. Johnny Long, who would end up having a profound influence on my life as well as the lives of my wife and children.

Who did Johnny Long choose as his successor when he left Lee High School for Troy University? Tom Borden.

Mr. Borden passed away recently and his funeral was held Sunday at First United Methodist Church in Cloverdale. If there were ever a way to express such a thing as a “beautiful” funeral, this was it: the best music, performed by the finest musicians in Montgomery, and a capacity congregation filled with a Who’s Who of all the music-makers in our area.

So much more could be written about Mr. Borden’s life, career, and influence and many others have stated it more eloquently than I.  But as I sat there marveling at the music and the memories, I recalled my first week on the job as band director at Robert E. Lee High School. I opened a box in the recording room and it had notebooks of Mr. Borden’s music theory lesson plans. He had even saved the class rosters through the years. For the 1967-68 school year, the first name on the list was Lynn Bird. At the time, I thought, what are the chances that I would see her name out of the hundreds of others who passed through that program?

At the conclusion of Mr. Borden’s funeral, the pastor told us to be seated for the postlude because the organist was going to play Mr. Borden’s favorite organ selection. It was Widor’s “Toccata.” I could not help but be filled with gratitude for Aunt Lynn and the musical life she passed on to all the rest of us through a long, beautiful Golden Thread.

Michael Bird is an assistant professor of music at Faulkner University in Montgomery.