Veteran, now 90, still entertains the troops
Music used as form of therapy for ex-soldiers
Mary Prescott is talking about the merits of being “bad” and how, in this life, if an individual goes around as a goody two-shoes all the time well, then, where is the “fun in that?”
Life is for adventure, and adventure sometimes involves causing mischief. For example, on her first date with her future husband, Mary Waller — as Mary was known — coaxed an innocent Canadian Army sergeant named Stephen Prescott into hopping over a farmer’s fence so that the pair could steal some supple-looking English plums from a farm near Guildford, U.K. The caper went sideways when the farmer caught the couple red-handed and came out firing with a BB gun.
“He yelled, ‘Not here again, you bloody Canadians,’ ” Mary says, laughing at the memory. “My husband had been in the real war — and he was really gun shy — and he was over that fence and half a mile down the road before I could even get back over it.”
Mary Waller was in the real war, too. She enlisted in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps on her 18th birthday in 1943 and shipped out to England, and later Europe, after a talent scout spotted the tall beauty with the golden voice from Hamilton, belting out Ave Maria at a Christmas concert at a base in Ottawa.
Mary Waller could sing and dance, and she spent 1944-45 performing for thousands of Canadian troops in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany as a member of a touring production of the Oscar Hammerstein II musical, Show Boat.
You could argue that Prescott, now 90, is still touring. She entertains a rapidly dwindling cast of old men who fought in that long-ago war at the Veterans Centre in Sunnybrook Hospital, where she lives alongside them. Prescott sings, plays the organ as well as the ukulele, and belongs to a jazz group and a quartet. Every Wednesday at 2 p.m., she attends music therapy class, taking a seat near the front of the room. Prescott and Trish MacAulay, a 30-something therapist with a brush cut, a guitar and a beautiful voice, are the only women in the class.
Prescott’s musical career no longer features a dancing component. Her days on the stage officially ceased in 1945 after she slipped during a performance and tore her hamstrings.
“I zigged when I should have zagged,” she says, with a shrug.
Bad hamstrings, plus a bout of surgery some years back to fix a misfiring sciatic nerve, have largely forced Prescott to use a motorized wheelchair. But that hasn’t dulled her mischievous spirit. Her iPad is loaded with golden wartime oldies. She has speakers wired to her chair and cruises the hospital halls playing her favourites.
“Music lifts people up,” she says.
Frank Mendham is 100 years old. He drove a tank in the war. He wears white sneakers, comfy sweaters and, like Mary, loves music. Mendham remembers the first time he heard Frank Sinatra sing. The old tank driver patrols the ward in his wheelchair. His hearing is sharp.
“Mary will come into the music room to play by herself,” Mendham says. “When I am in the hall and I hear that organ, I’ll come shuffling along in my wheelchair — just as fast as I can — so that I can sit outside the door, listening.”
Music is “a great thing,” says Prescott. Its therapeutic benefits were evident on the faces of the Second World War veterans who gathered for a music therapy class on a recent Wednesday afternoon, where a medley of songs from a lifetime ago elicited happy grins and set their toes to tapping, in search of the beat.
Prescott sat at the front of class, legs dangling from a piano bench. On her feet, were black slippers that traced tiny circles in the air — a dancer still — as she sang the melody on some wartime hits, including Vera Lynn’s old standby, White Cliffs of Dover.
“Mary is like a musical encyclopedia,” MacAulay said. “She keeps me on my toes.”
She is still entertaining the troops, and it was time for another song. How about something from Show Boat, someone suggested. Prescott looked to MacAulay. MacAulay returned the look. Show Boat it was.
“Fish got to swim, birds got to fly. I got to love one man till I die. Can’t help loving that man of mine,” the wartime entertainer warbled, in a voice she claims was ruined by too many cigarettes, but which sounded just about perfect to the room full of old soldiers at Sunnybrook.
“Tell me he’s lazy. Tell me he’s slow. Tell me I’m crazy — maybe I know — can’t help loving that man of mine.”
MARY IS LIKE A MUSICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA.