Row of Prunes

Many things we take for granted As we go along life's road. Now tonight in prayer I offer Thanks to God for joys bestowed.

In Boston's Symphony Hall last week, 2,500 listeners heard the Boston Pops Orchestra accompany a tenor in those lines of Evening Prayer, then stood to cheer. The composer, whom they were applauding, could not stand to acknowledge the cheers; Robert Grant Jr., 27, is partially paralyzed with multiple sclerosis. But he bobbed his head happily from his wheelchair near the stage. "This is the greatest night of my life," he said.

Neophyte Composer Grant, a Navy veteran, has been a patient in Cushing Veterans Administration Hospital in Framingham, Mass, since last year. Musically untrained except for a few childhood stabs at piano lessons, he asked Mrs. Charles Davidson, Red Cross volunteer, to teach him piano again. He mastered Sweet Rosie O'Grady with his right hand: "I couldn't use my left."

Later, while picking at the piano, he thought up a melody for "an evening prayer." Says Bob Grant: "I whistled it for Mrs. Davidson and she played it. She seemed to understand. We worked together about three months while she put the notes on paper--'row of prunes,' she calls them." Mrs. Davidson insisted that Grant write the words himself; it would be "good therapy."

Friends got Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston Pops, to come to the hospital and listen to the music while Mrs. Davidson played it. Fiedler was impressed, offered to send an arranger to set it for orchestra, asked Dartmouth man ('47) Grant: "How would you like Evening Prayer introduced by the Pops on Dartmouth night?" Between astonishment and gratefulness, Grant just said, "Dear God!" At week's end, Ed Sullivan had scheduled both Grant and Evening Prayer for a June airing on his Toast of the Town (CBS-TV). Composer Grant, back at Cushing, was happily pecking away at a couple of other tunes.

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