Life
He was born to John McGraw, a railroad worker, and Lillie Ashley, who worked as a seamstress at the Sewell Manufacturing Company. When he was about three months old, his family moved to Villa Rica, Georgia, where he lived to the age of 12. At that time the family moved to Bremen, Georgia. In adulthood he pursued a career in business in Bremen, managing a clothing manufacturing plant.
While he grew up, he was not a Sacred Harp singer, but was acquainted with the tradition. In an interview conducted in connection with his award of a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship (1982), he remarked:
- The McGraw family has been involved in Sacred Harp music for well over a hundred years, but I didn't get involved until I was 25 years old. I'd go to a singing with my mother and father, but I thought it was more important to stay outside and play in the spring and run around the house than it was to learn this tradition.
His involvement with Sacred Harp singing began when he attended a singing as a young adult in about 1953, developed an instant strong enthusiasm, and persuaded a second cousin (his "Uncle Bud" McGraw, a singing school teacher) to teach him about Sacred Harp music. McGraw then became a Sacred Harp composer, several of whose songs appear in the 1960 and subsequent editions of The Sacred Harp.
Read more about this topic: Hugh Mc Graw
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“We go to great pains to alter life for the happiness of our descendants and our descendants will say as usual: things used to be so much better, life today is worse than it used to be.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“When I was in high school I thought a vocation was a particular calling. Here’s a voice: “Come, follow me.” My idea of a calling now is not: “Come.” It’s like what I’m doing right now, not what I’m going to be. Life is a calling.”
—Rebecca Sweeney (b. 1938)
“That poor little thing was a good woman, Judge. But she just sort of let life get the upper hand. She was born here and she wanted to be buried here. I promised her on her deathbed she’d have a funeral in a church with flowers. And the sun streamin’ through a pretty window on her coffin. And a hearse with plumes and some hacks. And a preacher to read the Bible. And folks there in church to pray for her soul.”
—Laurence Stallings (1804–1968)