Introducing Thera

I cried the first time I heard Thera sing.  I cried the last time I heard Thera sing. 

Thera and I were both in John's studio in college.  For the most part, performances in studio were uninspired, partially memorized songs that made you struggle to keep your head from falling on the table in boredom.  When Thera started to sing the spiritual "Ol' Jim", I felt tears welling up, but I tried to control it.  When it came time to critique, I just started to sob.  I'm sure I made quite the first impression on Thera. 

It always felt good to make Thera laugh.  When you really wind him up, his hysterical laugh is one the Top 3 I have ever heard.  We had some serious fun when we went into Chris's studio.  Ah, that was the era of choir trips and parties.  I drove one of the two white campus vans to Corpus Christi, and Thera was in my group.  Hand sanitizer was a relatively new idea in the world, and we decided to slather it on all of the passengers in our mighty whitey.  Our group narrowly escaped the stomach flu that devastated the passengers in the other van. 

Our choir also went to Italy that year.  After everyone tried their best to alert their banks, get traveler's cheques, bring enough cash, etc, Thera's debit card was the only one that didn't work in the Italian ATM machines.  It wasn't a huge problem, because there were so many of us, someone could always buy him an extra slice of pizza, but he just wasn't going to have any spending money.  When we arrived in Siena, a big group of us sat in Piazza Del Campo, eating gelato.  There were hundreds of people milling around, being touristy, and we dared Alexis to sing "O Mio Babbino Caro".  She did it, and some people stopped to listen.  Don decided to sing, then Jessica, and more people gathered.  Almost all of us got up the nerve to sing solo (I chickened out, of course), then Mike conducted a group piece, and there was a huge group watching at that point.  We passed a hat, and collected about 200 dollars in Lire.  We considered it a boon, and gave the money to Thera.  Problem solved.  Later that night, a few of us assembled outside the kitchen of our hotel.  Thera insisted that I redeem myself for that afternoon by singing.  I protested.  He wanted to hear me do the Joan of Arc aria.  So I did it.  It's a looooong song.  It was the first time I did opera stuff in front of people outside of my studio, and I shook the whole time.  When I was done, Thera jumped to his feet, grabbed me and hugged me.  He was crying, and I thought that even if it was just the Grappa talking, I still felt special. 

The last time I saw Thera, it was years later, after we had both left school.  I was hanging out with my friends from the recently deceased Cider Jazz.  Thera stood in with a jazz band in Las Cruces and got up to sing "My Funny Valentine" in a very scatty, beboppy style.  I came full circle when I found myself sobbing uncontrollably at the sound of his voice.  Maybe it was the Corona talking, but I sure miss that voice.