Rosemarie Lombardo, surrounded by her brothers in 1943: from left, Guy, Victor, Lebert and Carmen

I couldn’t help but be saddened a bit this week by news of the passing of Rosemarie Lombardo Rogers in a small town in northern Ohio. The Lombardos were arguably the most famous family to hail from London, Ont. — a city that once boasted about that connection, but has long since allowed it to fade into memory, like the vanishing tones of a vinyl LP.

Rosemarie Rogers’ death at 85 bookends the musical family that dominated American popular music for much of the middle 20th century.

I immediately recalled my extended visit with Mrs. Rogers on a June afternoon in 2001. I had made an appointment to interview her for a column on the Lombardo musical story and her place in it. I arrived in Whitehouse, Ohio, in mid-morning and found her home near the end of a shaded street on the town’s outskirts. We talked for a couple of hours. She made us lunch, put some jazz on the Bose disc player in the kitchen, and we continued into the mid afternoon. The most curious part of the visit was the fact that I seemed to be able to tell her stories she’d never heard. I’d read Guy Lombardo’s autobiography, Auld Acquaintance, a year or so earlier and brought a couple of used copies of it with me. She thrilled at some of the anecdotes I read to her from the book, reliving them and, in some cases, finishing the story.

Rosemarie Lombardo Rogers

By the time I left, we were friends. I asked her to autograph the page on which her picture appeared, and she obliged, adding a few words (see the photo above). As for the second copy of the book, I left it with her; she didn’t have one. The column appeared in The London Free Press a week or so later.

Her obituary, as published in the Toledo Blade, is here. Her 19-year-old voice is preserved by recordings like this one.

The "Maple Leaf Forever" tree at the corner of Laing Street and Memory Lane, April 25, 2010

More than any other single factor, it was because of Alexander Muir’s song, The Maple Leaf Forever. See my column in today’s Globe and Mail.

The adjacent photo was taken the day of our visit to the tree in Toronto’s Leslieville neighbourhood in April.

Happy Canada Day!

But the prospect of a 500-kilogram great blue heron, made of steel and suspended from the upscale Renaissance Tower above special masonry below, bears all the marks of a very successful public-private partnership. Think London’s Via Rail station or the central branch of the London Public Library, except that this project will be much more about art than function.

Ted Goodden describes the installation of a steel great blue heron near the forks of the Thames River in London, Ont.

At a news conference this afternoon in the lobby of the newly built tower immediately south of the John Labatt Centre, artist Ted Goodden unveiled a small model of his sculpture and spoke eloquently of the images he hopes it will evoke. The steel bird will “gesture” toward the forks of what the region’s First Nations called the Antler River — the waterway European settlers later called the Thames. For both aboriginals and Europeans, the river was the locus of community life and commercial activity. The great blue heron was, and still is, a common sight. In crafting his sculpture, Goodden envisioned the heron ascending toward King Street from a resting place on the river.

Goodden’s three-by-five-metre heron, when installed, will also function as a kind of seasonal timepiece, its left wing outfitted with a sundial-type orb that will track the sun’s movement and register the summer solstice and points of semiannual equinox on the brickwork at street level.

Goodden’s installation will mark the end of a competition that included more than a dozen entries from across Canada. The juried selection process was led by the London Arts Council. The project is worth $100,000. Tricar Group, owner of Renaissance Tower, was granted a higher residential density during the project’s development in exchange for a contribution in the form of public art, guided by the city’s public art policy, which was adopted in January.

Goodden’s sculpture should be in place by the end of the year. Its design has already been tested by the Alan G. Davenport Wind Engineering Group at the University of Western Ontario.

London Free Press video of this afternoon’s event is here.