As one of the “summer kids” who arrived each June to visit relatives, I was politely treated like a mini-cosmopolitan because I came from New York — but I knew from early on that the real cosmopolitans lived right here. I heard them talk about their travels to the Holy Land or the Galapagos Islands; I watched them laugh about running into each other in the Swiss Alps or at a Paris cafe. These were not the sorts of conversations I heard on Long Island, which was really much more provincial.
Commerce has produced a long list of award-winning journalists. Its public servants and politicians have had a major impact on state government. It is the setting of a famous novel which has been made into a movie and a grand opera. What is going on here? Is it something in the water?
I was reminded of this question twice last week: at the First Baptist Church’s Christmas cantata, and again the very next day, when I learned that Mac Barber had died. Mac and my mother were near contemporaries, growing up here, and he was a family friend who was especially good to my grandmother for as long as she lived. No matter how busy or important he became, he turned up at her birthday party each spring, often with special citations for her from the governor or the president, which he presented in a sonorous voice as only Mac could. I learned more about his thoughtfulness when I went to work at the library here and discovered that many books in the library’s permanent collection had been given by Mac and his wife Janette, who was president of the Commerce Friends of the Library for years, or by Mac in memory of Janette after she died.
Mac would have loved the First Baptist cantata and the astonishing sound of almost 100 voices singing perfectly as one. Hearing the splendid hymns of Christendom being sung with this kind of strength was like standing in a gale-force wind; I could hardly bear the beauty and the power of it. Yet later, when I tried to congratulate Todd Chandler, the conductor and musician who, it appeared, had made all of this happen, he said, “Oh, I just stand up there and wave my arms. It’s the singers who make the music.”
Mac would have loved that, too. And maybe it’s Commerce’s secret. Maybe folks here don’t go for the glory, but focus on what they hope to achieve. It makes for some amazing achievements, and makes this a terrific place to live.
Susan Harper is director of the Commerce Public Library. She lives in Commerce.
