Louis Roney: Thanks!

Seated with friends at a bounteous Thanksgiving table, we hold hands with those on either side of us and join in the blessing being said. I find my thoughts concentrating on things without which my life would be infinitely poorer, perhaps even unbearable.

I rejoice above all at being an American. I realize that I am thankful for being a lucky person. Once again I give thanks that I did not perish, as thousands did, during my four-year World War II Naval service.

I enjoy a conscious excitement when getting up in the morning. I’m thankful for that fact. At 95, I am indebted to my genes and to temperate living for a strong physical constitution. I believe wholeheartedly in “a sound mind in a sound body.” I believe that negative thinking can make one’s body sick, and that a maltreated, ill body can poison one’s thinking. If the body is the temple of the soul, lets keep the temple clean, healthy, and in good repair.

“Doing” is what life is all about. Doing nothing is the stuff of death.

I am thankful that I was brought up accepting responsibility for my own actions. I try not to repeat my mistakes, so that I don’t cross the line that separates an excusably imperfect human being from a damned fool. In retrospect, nothing that I value highly ever came quickly or easily to me. I am thankful for a keenly attuned conscience that keeps my pride from getting me too far in debt to reality.

I am grateful to people who let the chips fall where they may. I have never been felled by a truthful chip. But heavily-timbered lies have knocked me temporarily for many a loop.

I am thankful to Harvard College for the scholarship, which gave me four years that changed every aspect of my young existence.

I am thankful for having been born with a good voice, and for having been graced as pupil, protégé and colleague by great voice coach Maestro Renato Bellini, the supreme tenor Jussi Bjorling, the dazzling Met soprano – and movie star – Grace Moore, and finally Luigi and Hulda Rossini, my longtime mentors. I am thankful that my life has taken me from Central Florida to so many cosmopolitan places I had only read about.

After 40 years of singing, I was thankful to become enthusiastically occupied as a distinguished professor, who for 24 years at UCF could pass on to talented young people those treasures of vocal art that were given to me by many who are no longer on earth. I am gratified to have embodied the long-honored artistic tradition of bel canto singing and do not presume to have added much original of my own to anything.

Above all, I am grateful for my smart, spirited, gifted, positive-thinking b.w., who sees mostly the good in me – but who pulls no punches when she thinks I am out of line. She is the seeing eye light in my Samson night.

You can’t choose your siblings, but, thank goodness, you can choose your mate and trustworthy friends! That’s a “relative” privilege to be grateful for.

Lastly, I am thankful for the Christian ethic, the embodiment of the golden rule, which generates intrinsic and extrinsic peace. The loveliest fruit of this way of thinking is called “good will to men.” Good will is the product of our crediting each other for even the smallest of human kindnesses in our lives – thanks!

“A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues.” — Cicero

“He who receives a good turn should never forget it. He who does one should never remember it.” — Pierre Charron, 16th century philosopher

“Gratitude is the heart’s memory.” — French proverb

“There is one day that is truly ours...Thanksgiving Day is our purely American day.” — O. Henry

“Thanks for the memories.” — Bob Hope, who died at 101

“If we stopped to think more, we would stop to thank more.” – Anonymous

Amen!