The Best Man

The Best Man

Clarence Hagler Rice was the best man in our wedding. He was 72 years old and lived in a quaint one-story home on Reed Street in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Hagler was my fiancée’s neighbor. Mr. Rice had been a commander in the U.S. Navy during WWII. During the occupation of West Berlin after the war, Hagler met and married Inge who was a widowed, German lady whom he described at first meeting as having eyes that sparkled like champagne. Inge, however, had suffered much loss during the war in the death of her husband and children. I only questioned Inge once about her experiences during the war. A sadness came over her with her hidden grief visible just for a moment when she answered that the war years were years of great sorrow. She had to keep them in her past in order to survive. I never questioned her again.

Hagler was several years older than Inge, and this was a second marriage for him. From this union was born Heide when Mr. Rice was in his 50's. It was recognized very early that Heide had prodigious musical gifts and by the age of two was playing simple songs she had learned from her father. By the time Heide was 12 years old she was an accomplished pianist in the line of other child prodigies. Her parents traveled with her by train from New Orleans once a month to have her study with the renowned Roy McAlister at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. We remember seeing her on campus during those monthly sojourns as all of the university music students marveled at her talent.

Four short years later at age 16, Heide graduated from high school and was enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Since the Institute was not a resident institution, students had to procure their own living quarters. Because of Heide's age, her parents decided to have Mrs. Rice go with her and live with her during those years at the Institute.

The Institute years is when I met Hagler for the first time as I visited my fiancée. Mr. Rice had moved his family to Tuscaloosa and took up residence in an inherited home on Reed Street right next door to what would eventually become our first apartment as newlyweds.

Hagler was almost 70 at the time. He was a quiet spoken, Southern gentleman who was well educated, knew how to work with his hands and was obviously from the generation of my grandparents. He and his wife had first settled in New Orleans after his time in the U.S. Navy. As Heide showed great promise as a budding piano prodigy, they acquired a second grand piano to go with the grand they had purchased in Germany after the war. Young Heide was playing piano concerti at an early age and her first teacher (her father) as well as subsequent teachers came to the house for lessons and would play the second piano part (the orchestral reduction) as Heide performed the piano solo part. (We would acquire not too many years later the German piano, a Blüthner that had been built in what was then East Germany. That is a story in itself which may be told in a subsequent entry).

When it came time for our marriage, Hagler was living alone since his wife and daughter were off at school in Philadelphia. We were planning a very small wedding but would have a large, festive reception six months after the wedding so that many of our friends and family could attend. Plus, it would be the occasion of my Master of Music organ recital, and this would guarantee a hefty attendance. Good planning!

Clarence Hagler Rice would be our Best Man. On the evening of the wedding, I arrived at my fiancée’s apartment in my 1969 VW Bug. Mr. Rice came over from next door, and the three of us piled in the Bug and drove across the Black Warrior River over the drawbridge that connected Tuscaloosa with Northport. The ceremony was at 7 p.m. We arrived five minutes late due to the drawbridge being up to allow a barge to continue down the river. We were married and then proceeded to our wedding supper. To Hagler's surprise, we invited him to come with us to the Waysider Inn, and the three of us enjoyed a wonderful supper of fried chicken and all the trimmings. It was a happy day. Clarence Hagler Rice was the connection to our heritage from the past, our joy in the present, and our hope for the future. Hagler died three years later in 1973 at the age of 75. His wife Inge died in the early 1980's and his daughter Heide left a concert career to study medicine. We lost contact with the family after Inge's death. Our two wonderful mementos from the Rice family still remind us of a wonderful family who influenced us in such positive ways during those early years. Their memory lives on in the 1884 Blüthner grand piano that graces our living room and the floor to ceiling walnut wardrobe that holds most of our music collection. Next time, the story of the Walnut Wardrobe as told by Clarence Hagler Rice in his own words.

Happy Musing.

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