Happy birthday, Theodore Thomas!

Wishing a very happy birth anniversary to our founder and first music director, Theodore Thomas, on the occasion of his 190th birthday!

According to Andrea Friederici Ross — in her new book Sisters of Influence: A Biography of Zina, Amy and Rose Fay — Rose wrote a poem in memory of Theodore shortly after his death in early 1905, "titled To Theodore Thomas, My Morning Star, [expressing] her grief and the depth of her love for her departed husband:

"The morning star in glorious splendor ‘rose
Upon my life when all the sky was bright
With dawning day — my happy day of love,
Through love’s long day, of fourteen winged years
He shone with steadfast, tender beaming light
My guide and beacon towards the better life.
And when at length the evening hour drew nigh,
He sank to rest in sunset’s radiant glow,
Leaving me shrouded in eternal night
Save for the rainbow orbit which he traced
In transit o’er my life. This shineth still
Above the mist of melancholy tears —
A bow of promise, love and energy,
The arch on which my hope of heaven rests."

— excerpt from Sisters of Influence: A Biography of Zina, Amy and Rose Fay
by Andrea Friederici Ross, 2025

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