Nora Gleason: Cathedral's First Organist, Part 2

photo courtesy of Diocesan Archives

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Nora Gleason, Bishop Scanlan's organist and his private secretary, outlived Bishop Scanlan by three years. She died at the age of 45 after suffering a nervous breakdown. 

The Bishop’s Dinner: A Benefit for the Cathedral of the Madeleine will be held Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2008, with Bishop Wester at the Grand America Hotel. We hope all patrons of the Cathedral will continue to support this ongoing effort for preservation of this historic and architecturally significant building that stands as a beacon on our community.

by Gary Topping

Her formal education completed, Nora Gleason returned to Salt Lake City in 1893 when she is listed in the city directory as living with her mother, an arrangement that continued at least to 1900. After that, her mother disappeared from the historical record, as had her younger sister after 1880.

At any rate, Nora’s career was duly launched, as was her life as an independent adult. Although her church employment merited her full time salary of $50 a month, Nora augmented it by what was apparently a very successful private teaching career. Most years her entry in the city directory was an advertisement in bold type, and a studio photograph of her in about 1914 shows an elegantly dressed woman of obvious prosperity and social status. For some reason the location of her studio changed frequently over the years, but it was generally on the 100 East block of 100 South in the heart of the business district or at 260 1st Ave., adjacent to the Cathedral block in her residential quarters. In those studios she taught not only piano, but also mandolin and guitar at the rate of eight lessons for $6. She was apparently a teacher of the old school, a professional musician who took her craft seriously and expected the same of her students. She booked lessons in series and took her pay in advance. She offered no refunds for missed lessons, but allowed students to make them up at the end of the series. That policy notwithstanding, she took a dim view of students who missed, as her receipt book admonished, "Pupils missing lessons do not improve, and teachers can not afford to lose regular work each day." Like her famously hard-driving bishop and probably her miner father as well, she gave a good day’s work for a good day’s pay.

In addition to their professional affiliation, Nora Gleason and Bishop Scanlan developed a warm personal relationship, a relationship perhaps closer than with anyone else in his life but his family and his priests. A unique and revealing photograph taken in about 1908 shows Bishop Scanlan in a rare relaxed moment at a mountain cabin somewhere in a canyon east of Salt Lake City enjoying a visit by relatives from Chicago. At the opposite side of the family group from the bishop stands his only invited guest, his personal secretary Nora Gleason who would certainly have met and perhaps even boarded with them during her musical education.

So close was their association that his death in 1915 precipitated her retirement. Not only was her health declining, she apparently recognized in Bishop Glass a very different kind of person from Bishop Scanlan and a person who would have his own ideas about how to run the diocese – a reading that turned out to be accurate. Her retirement would give him the opportunity to hire his own staff and strike out in his own direction. Not that she snubbed Bishop Glass and walked out the back door as he was coming in the front. Rather, she stayed on to provide the music for his Mass of installation, which was reported in the Intermountain Catholic to be "one of the most impressive ever held in Salt Lake." In addition to providing an "augmented choir" for the event, Miss Gleason also recruited a small chamber orchestra and played the organ. The music, the paper exulted, was "gloriously beautiful… consisting of some of the church’s most famous selections," It would have taken something to impress the wealthy and urbane Bishop Glass, so "it was gratifying to the members of the choir, who have worked so hard during the past weeks, to know that Bishop Glass was very pleased and the distinguished visitors and his close friends were enthusiastic in their praise of the music."

Nor did even that exhaust her hospitality to the new bishop. In what appears to have been her last public appearance, Nora Gleason served as toastmistress at a banquet offered Bishop Glass by the children of St. Mary’s Sodality at the Cathedral to celebrate his installation only a few days after the event. With the bishop and other prominent church figures in attendance, Nora was admittedly nervous as she ventured into her first experience as a toastmistress. She cleverly released the tension by recounting an episode from the popular story, "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch." As her crotchety spouse lay on his deathbed, Mrs. Wiggs wrung her hands and cried, "Oh, Mr. Wiggs, be you dying? Be you dying?" To which he replied in irritation, "How should I know, Nancy? I’ve never died before."

In her retirement, Nora Gleason continued to be active, giving private lessons in her studio-residences at various addresses on the lower Avenues. But hard work now took an increasing toll on her fragile constitution. On April 9, 1918, she became ill, embarking on a long decline that culminated in her hospitalization and death at 5:30 p.m. on May 26 in Holy Cross Hospital, an institution founded by her beloved Bishop Scanlan. Bishop Glass himself administered the last sacraments to her. She was 45 years old.

The beauty Nora Gleason brought into her world reached beyond the Catholic community. Soon after her death, the Intermountain Catholic published a poem written in her memory by Kate Thomas. Like Nora, Kate Thomas had a lifelong love for the arts and letters and never married, giving her life and energies instead to her literary craft.

Although raised a Mormon, Miss Thomas became a religious seeker who developed an affection for Catholicism along with other religious traditions. How they met and the nature of their friendship is not known, but two women with such similar interests could hardly have avoided meeting at some point. The poem, titled "Salve Regina," is full of an authentic Catholic feeling that Nora Gleason would surely have loved:

Mary, Queen of Heaven high,

Joy of mortals that must die,

Lo, a spirit ventures

One who wearied of the race

Trusting claims a little place

In God’s mercy and His grace

Mary, meet her at the door

All thy wealth of loving pour

On the heart whose wounds are

sore

* * *

Mary, give her lilies blown

All about our Father’s throne

And an organ of her own

A great organ she may play

Throughout heaven’s endless day.

Praising God alone for aye.

Mary, Mother, pray for her,

Lead her to the Comforter,

Where the strains of glory are.

Topping is the archivist for the Diocese of Salt Lake City.

For further information on the Bishop’s Dinner contact Father Joseph Mayo or Ms. Laurel Dokos-Griffith at 328-8941.