“Never Say No to a Lady”

The other day I was lamenting how impossible it was to find information from waaayyyy back in the mid-1980’s. After all, it was pre-internet (which I made sound almost like the Jurassic era)!

Well, this evening something made me think of Mr Lynch, my first band teacher. When I was in 6th grade and first learning the flute, we took a field trip to the junior high school to see a musical — complete with orchestra! — which Mr Lynch had composed and produced.

Based on the life of suffragette and abolitionist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, it was titled, “Never Say No to a Lady” and thrilled me to my core. I was so excited to get to junior high school so I could be part of it myself, playing in the orchestra!

The plan was to perform it in alternating years, so I waited (im)patiently through 7th grade, until finally it was time! Orchestra parts were passed out and auditions were held for the acting roles. But then disaster struck.

One of my fellow students was a pretty black girl named Bridget, and she was upset that she couldn’t audition for the lead role of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a white woman. There was the equally juicy role of Harriet Tubman, but that wouldn’t do for Bridget.

In retrospect, I realize she had a point, but my goodness! — this was 1968, I was twelve years old, and all I really cared about was getting to be part of the orchestra for a real live musical!

Well, Bridget’s mother lodged some sort of complaint, there was a big ruckus, and the musical was cancelled. They replaced it with “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”, which was a good show in its own way but didn’t come close to the level of “Never Say No to a Lady”.

Instead of a full orchestra we had a small band. And instead of powerful women characters at a important time in history, we were focused on a cartoon character. A lovable cartoon character, but still…!

Boy, was I upset when the cancellation was announced! It was so unfair and I was ready to rally the troops and lead a protest (yes, I was fairly fiery as an pre-adolescent). Acceptance of “what is” didn’t come naturally to me, that’s for sure!

The final blow? Neither Bridget nor any of the other students of color even participated in the replacement show. Oohhh, that made me mad.

So, for whatever reason I found myself thinking of Mr Lynch, but I couldn’t remember his first name and figured there would be no way I would find anything related to the show. Imagine my surprise when I googled “Never Say No to a Lady musical Mr Lynch” and actually found something!

It wasn’t much, but it was nevertheless quite satisfying to discover that Mr Lynch copyrighted his work, which showed up in the Library of Congress in the Catalog of Copyright Entries: Third series.

Now I’m wondering what it would take to find a copy of the musical itself… 🤔