Thanks a million Carl for offering and sending me this lovely clip of Lena and sharing your wonderful story with us all!
xxx
MAY 23, 2011
I got the night off because it was so slow. Gave Markus his two pictures; went to Fedex Office and finally scanned and uploaded the photo of Katy and I as well as the pic of Lena from the Free Press 10th Anniversary Issue way back when. I have a story behind THAT one:
I bought that issue in 1974 because of the big number 520 on the cover. There were quotes from various people they had interviewed over their first ten years; among them was a brief quote from Lena, whom I'd first seen a few months earlier on Wonderama singing Take Me Home, Country Roads. There was also a pull-out section with some sleazy ads in it; after seeing that I thought I'd bought a paper I wasn't supposed to have (I was only 14 at the time), and when I heard my dad coming towards the back room I went to the garage and threw the paper up on the loft. (Our home in California had the garage and adjacent back room separated from the house by a back yard). Dad knew something was up when he saw me taking frequent glances of the loft but he didn't find out about the paper. I never saw it again but I was recently able to buy a copy of it off eBay which didn't have the pullout section but had what I really wanted: the photo of Lena with the quote.
I first heard of the singer's passing while searching for Danny Hutton's song Roses and Rainbows on YouTube, almost exactly two months after my mother died. In the three years since then, I have visited Deborah's site innumerable times and even made a few friends in the Greenock webcam chat room as well as hearing Bute FM over the web. Since then, not a day has gone by that I haven't thought about Lena at least once. I paid scant attention to her career while she was alive and I will spend the rest of my days regretting not keeping up. If only I had been there for her...
