The Christmas Eve Davis Patty Let Me Sing "O Holy Night"

The Christmas Eve Davis Patty Let Me Sing "O Holy Night"

People, Episcopalians and Baptists and Methodists and all the rest of us, came from miles around for St. Paul's Christmas Eve Midnight service in Columbus. People who weren't sure whether to kneel or stand or take communion came. It was the thing to do.

I grew up in First Baptist Church in Columbus and, after a college summer in the mountains of Vermont, joined the Episcopal Church. I had been a music major at Mississippi College in Clinton and was destined to be a Minister of Music in a Southern Baptist Church somewhere.

I'll never forget telling Dr. Woodson, the minister at First Baptist Church, that I was going to join the Episcopal Church. Dr. Woodson said, "Oh son, if you aren't finding what you need in the Baptist Church, try the Methodist Church but don't join that Episcopal Church!"

But, I did and a few years later ended up back in Columbus with a wife and two babies. We attended St. Paul's Episcopal Church pretty faithfully. I sang in the choir.

For decades, one of the highlights of St. Paul's Christmas Eve service was Davis Patty singing "Oh, Holy Night". Davis was a bachelor and a banker at Merchants and Farmers Bank. He attended the opera in New York City and gave elaborate dinner parties (somebody tried to eat a lace doily one night) and had a radio program on Sunday morning on one of the local stations. He even conducted church services in Macon when they didn't have a priest, but his real claim to fame for me was "Oh, Holy Night".

So, this one Christmas Eve I showed up at St. Paul's for the service and Davis couldn't talk. He whispered or wrote out (I'm foggy on how he communicated with me) that he couldn't do "Oh, Holy Night" and it was up to me to pull it off. If it had existed in those days, I would have responded "OMG!" But it didn't, and I'm pretty sure I thought "Thank You, Jesus!!!!!"

I'm not Davis Patty, and I never was, but I did the best I could that night and he said I did OK. I'm pretty sure it was better than the Christmas Eve service I did "Ave Maria" in Latin.