Is Anyone Home?

Blogging from Bruce
June 2, 2008
Vonda Tedford-Keon

‘Hey, is anyone home?’
Here I sit staring at the screen of my computer and the little cursor is just flashing at me. I am listening to a wonderful thoughtful song written and sung by a long lost friend that I stumbled across while surfing the internet over the weekend. Jamie was at that awkward age when I knew her best. Her dad, Charles Ambrose, was my advisor and mentor at MUW. There were many times that I was asked to ‘watch’ Jamie Elizabeth’ as her mom fondly called her. You know how Southern moms are. They have to double up on those names. If I ever heard my whole name I knew that I was in some kind of trouble. Come to think of it as I am rapidly approaching the ole double nickel birthday, my mom still doubles up on my name, sometimes with great emphasis on each syllable.
Ahh, I have gone off on the rabbit trail again, let me get back to my little friend Jamie. She isn’t so little any longer and closer in age now than we were back in the earlier 70’s. She was a uber talented child that could play the piano in a way that put most people to shame and she did it by ear all the while fooling people into thinking she could read those little notes. Play it once and her mind must have been a steel trap that snapped and held in every note. Yet I often suspected that she silently beat herself up over it. I was in awe of her intelligence. She went to do her graduate work in Germany in Celtic Studies for heavens sake; on a Fulbright Scholarship no less. Genius comes in small packages.
Jamie was mortified that she had to have a ‘sitter’ at her age. I don’t know that she ever figured out that I was probably more house sitting than babysitting. Well, yeah, she knows it now, but being the only daughter and the youngest of the family, she was the one that her parents wanted protected whether she liked it or not.
When her name popped up on my search screen the other night while I was searching for a book, I noticed it was highlighted so I moved my little flashing cursor and clicked on it. Then a page appeared with a photograph. Yep, it was the same Jamie I had ‘babysat’ over 30 years ago. When I clicked on her music I was blown away. One of them is called ‘Is Anybody Home?’ It brings to mind the welcoming sight and sound of that creaking screen door on the front porch and coming back home after being gone for a while. It envisions wrapping yourself up in hugs and kisses from family you haven’t seen in a while and wonderful dinners at family reunions during the holidays. As we all get older things change and we can’t go home any more. But the memories live forever in our hearts and minds. Thanks to talented songwriters and authors, people and simpler times live on.
Are you wondering if we have reconnected? Well, yes we have and since she now lives in England, the internet is the only way to communicate these days. We have traded in the creaking screen door for the computer screen and the blinking cursor. But as I listen to her music, I know that she is still the same gifted genius she was when she was just an awkward preteen that didn’t need a keeper.

It’s the sound of a heart that is falling, hey
It’s the sound of a memory calling, hey
It’s the sound of a lost voice aching, hey
It’s the sound of silence breaking. Hey!
Is anyone home?
Jamie Ambrose, composer
www.myspace.com/jamieambrose

I lost an old friend

As I was surfing for something obscure last evening I stumbled upon an obituary that made me stop and take a deep breath. A dear friend was found murdered in Mobile, Alabama. It was all so senseless to me. William Joseph "Bill" Lumalcuri was one of the finest men I have ever know. I met Bill when I had just graduated from university and had moved into my first apartment. I lived upstairs and he moved into the one below me. He was a little Italian guy from New York City but he like the South because that was where his mom was from. He was an Ole Miss graduate and settled in Tupelo to be a middle school counselor. Bill was a great person. He was the kind of person that would give you the shirt off his back and the food off his table and never think about how he was going to eat. He was one of the first people I ever met that bought things in bulk because it was cheaper in the long run.
My birthday is August 7 and his was December 7, 1947. I would call him on Pearl Harbor day and he would call me on what he referred to as the day after the bomb dropped. We had a strange and wonderful friendship. He was Ole Miss to the bone and I wasn't. I was taller than he was by a mile. He worried about me a lot because I had a tendency to be a loose cannon. He was my knight in shining armor with no strings attached and the wisest person I probably will ever know.
If I didn't get up and go to church Bill would be knocking on my door inviting me to go with him to St. James. I was already looking for a church home and little did Bill know that I was interested in the Catholic faith. Years later after all of my journeys and trying on different churches, when I finally was in full membership in the Catholic Church, Bill laughingly said he was at fault for bringing me those times. I remember asking him if he would be god-parent to my daughters when they were born. He declined saying he hadn't really been a faithful Catholic but he acted like he did take on the role nevertheless. He would come to see them on their birthdays and send them little happies from their 'uncle' Bill. I'm sorry he didn't get to come to their confirmation last year or to know that the oldest has graduated and is on her way to university in the fall. I can only hope that there will be a 'Bill' in her life to steer her along the right path.
Because of his goodness he is now dead. I am sure it's all going to be something really stupid and the guy that shot him will probably get off by reason of insanity. Bill tried to help everyone he met. It was a character flaw I guess. He tried to see only the good in everyone. He was the kind of person that would lift you up when you were low. He was a great help to a lot of students with problems in his over 30 years of teaching. He was a great help to all of the people that passed through his life.
Bill never married, it was his penance, he told me once, for something in his wilder younger college years. It never seemed right to pursue that any farther and I never pressed the issue. It was his decision to make and he made it and if he had wanted to share any more I am sure he would have.
Bill Lumalcuri was a great guy. The world should mourn the passing of the likes of him. He truly tried to live as if yesterday was history and tomorrow is a mystery. He lived as Christ wanted him to live, in the today without trying to second guess what tomorrow was going to bring.

One scripture I always connected with Bill is this:
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20).
That is what William Joseph Lumalcuri lived by. Goodbye my old friend. You will live on in my memory and with Jesus.