It’s been almost two years since our Wilshire friend George Gagliardi passed away, but he continues to reveal his vast musical talent and love for others in amazing ways. Most recently, his gifts had me searching for a Pearl.
Off and on over the past 18 months I’ve been going through boxes full of George’s papers, extracting everything related to his lifelong career as a musician and composer: finished sheet music, lyric sheets, hand-written notations. Most recently, I’ve done the same with his computer files that were retrieved by one of his many friends with technical expertise. The result is a spreadsheet with almost 1,300 original songs and 140 arrangements of other people’s music. The compositions span the full range of music genres and instrumentation – from church solos and anthems to pop ballads, jazzy torch songs and lively dance tunes.
Among the computer files, I found a dozen pieces of music that didn’t have George’s name as composer or arranger but instead had “Pearl Bellamy” at the top. They were short pieces that appeared to be based on scriptures from the Bible with titles such as “Come Let Us Go,” “Do Not Fear” and “Those Who Hope in the Lord.” They were arranged for voice with piano accompaniment and rendered professionally with a score-writing computer application that looked like most of George’s work.
If George had helped create these pieces, I needed to know if this Pearl was a co-writer or an artist whose work he had arranged. Based simply on the name and the nature of the music, I thought Pearl might be a gospel singer. Google searches of the name brought nothing, so I went to a source I’ve written about: the Black Gospel Music Archive at Baylor University, one of the largest digital collections in the world. Again, nothing.
My next thought was maybe this was one of George’s far-flung musician or vocalist friends. His Facebook account is still active so I searched his list of friends and again, nothing. Stumped but not deterred, I decided while on Facebook to do a broad search for Pearl Bellamy, and that generated a long list of Pearl Bellamys and variations on the name. Most were obviously not a match while others held some promise, so I checked to see if George might be among their friends. He wasn’t.
I was ready to give up but decided to try one more thing on Facebook: I searched “Pearl Bellamy in Texas.” That produced one person by that name in Arlington, and another person with a different name but with a link to a YouTube video titled “Pearl Katherine Wilcox Bellamy 1933-2018.” I clicked the link to find a video of the type we often see at funerals. I watched for a few minutes and saw black-and-white photos of a young woman, accompanied by “Give Me Jesus,” a song familiar to many churchgoers.
Hearing that song prompted me to search for this Pearl’s obituary online, and I found it. Reading it, I learned Pearl Katherine Wilcox Bellamy was a native of North Dakota, met her husband at Northwest Nazarene College, and together they worked in Montessori and Christian education in Kansas, Washington and Alaska.
And then this “aha” sentence: “It was here that she began writing music for Scripture verses which she recorded and added to the kindergarten curriculum created by her husband.” From there they moved to Missouri and then back to Washington, and then I read this: “In 2007, they switched their home address to Winnsboro, Texas, living on property owned by their daughter and her husband. That time was special to Pearl as seven grandchildren lived just across the pond with visits, meals, and celebrations continually being shared.”
Those who knew George know he spent a lot of time in Winnsboro, performing with musician friends there and leading a music camp for children during the summers. I reached out to his Winnsboro friends, and one of them, Shannon Monk, pulled all the pieces together.
Shannon told how she and George produced a Christmas show in Winnsboro for several years in a row. “It was always a sellout, because, well, George!,” Shannon said. One of the shows featured Pearl’s family, Cary and Bonny Ramsey and their seven children, who Shannon had gotten to know and who George had also become very close to. Sadly, Bonny succumbed to cancer at age 51, and Pearl became paralyzed after a routine back surgery.
“She was a very strong and faithful woman and she was inspired to set her favorite Psalms to music and that is how George came to transcribe her musical inspiration. It was a gift she wanted to leave for her family,” Shannon said.
And as Pearl’s obituary states: “Her most precious joy was listening to her grandchildren sing those songs. And now, her great-grandchildren are listening to Grandma’s Bible verses put to music.”
So, there it is, the unexpected story of George, Pearl and her songs from the Bible. I wish I had met Pearl, who loved the Lord and her family so much to have given them the precious gift of these songs. But I knew George and through him Shannon, both who helped share the gift of faith and music with Pearl’s family and others, and that gets me pretty close to knowing Pearl.