As everyone knows, Betty was deeply involved in folklore studies. But it wasn’t until we’d met a few times that I learned she held a PhD from the College of Arts and letters at MSU — my college. And her degree from an interdisciplinary program much like my own field of American Studies. Her dissertation advisor was Bob Anderson, an inspiring man I know from MSU, from Edgewood Church in East Lansing, even from my neighborhood. I marveled at these connections and wondered how she’d been able to complete her doctorate amid the competing demands of a very full family and community life. Every time we discussed a movie or talked about my research I sensed I was in the presence of someone who knew a lot about the study of culture, and was a sophisticated reader of cultural artifacts, from quilts and stained glass to popular songs and movies.
After one of our conversations she emailed me a story she’d come across somewhere. It was called “Hymns and Praise Songs,” and it was a very funny story about the difference between these two styles of church music. A young man from the country goes to a megachurch and hears this newfangled praise music for the first time. He does an impression of it for his wife: simplistic lyrics, repeated over and over with extreme sincerity and emotion. That same day, as chance would have it, a woman from the city goes to a little country church where they still sing hymns. Hymns, her husband asks, what are hymns? She does an exaggerated impression of those wordy, stiff, formal, old-fashioned songs. In a funny way, the story makes an important point about music in church that has been true in one form or another for centuries. Last month I gave a lecture at a church in Connecticut, and I thought it would be a perfect way to begin. And it turned out it was. I’m not known for prodigious joke-telling but this story had the crowd laughing for the duration. For a few brief precious moments I felt like Jon Stewart. Thanks, Betty. You will never be forgotten or replaced, and your passing leaves a gaping hole in many lives. But you left an example of dedicated research, a legacy that will continue for many years to come in the work of your colleagues, your children and grandchildren.