Letter of the day: Rest in peace, Miss Kitt; a great vocalist and a patriot

I was in the U.S. Army during 1952-54, stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. In the fall of '52 on my first weekend pass, I went to St. Louis and visited the YMHA (Young Men's Hebrew Association). On Sunday afternoon, I was sitting with a couple of hundred servicemen when this woman walked in with a man who stood near a piano and said, "Miss Eartha Kitt is going to sing for you," and then he started to play the piano. In the next few minutes I fell in love with that most wonderful voice. She sang for over an hour. She walked up and down the aisles asking everyone where they were from, etc. Whenever I could catch her singing over the radio, I would listen to that wonderful voice and her special interpretation of each song. I purchased her records and later her CDs. During the 1960s, when she was invited to lunch at the White House with the First Lady, she told her what she thought of the Vietnam War. After that, she couldn't find a stage to sing from, or a radio station that would play her songs for several years. When I saw that the Minnesota Orchestra was advertising that she was coming in December to do a concert here, I wrote her a letter reminding her of when we had met, and that I would be in the audience. I was very unhappy when that concert was canceled, most likely due to her illness. Eartha Kitt was a great singer, dancer and a patriotic American. As the song says, "She was too marvelous for words." ALAN STONE, MINNETONKA