A memorial to Don Trefsger at the Mermaid Inn session Sunday.
Some glad morning when this life is o’er,
I’ll fly away;
To a home on God’s celestial shore,
I’ll fly away.
I’ll fly away, Oh Glory
I’ll fly away;
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I’ll fly away.
They were all there on Sunday: singers, fiddlers, an uilleann piper, and tin whistle, accordion, mandolin and harmonica players. Traditional Irish and bluegrass. Old guys with gray beards and young kids wearing flip-flops. The Mermaid Inn’s barroom isn’t all that spacious, but musicians of all stripes took up half of it.
They sat facing each other in a circle of hard-backed wooden chairs, the afternoon sunlight pouring through the bar’s stained glass windows, and they sang songs of remembrance. Songs like “Amazing Grace,” Hank Williams’ “I Saw the Light” and the Gospel bluegrass standard, “I’ll Fly Away.”
When bassist Don Trefsger left this world, a year and a half after the motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed, he clearly left behind many good friends, and a surfeit of songs.
Non-musical relatives, friends and fellow congregants from Cumberland County Community Church took up the rest of the room and overflowed into a small adjoining dining room. There were so many, they required name tags. maybe the only person who didn’t need a name tag was Chris Brennan Hagy, who organized the memorial. She attended to Trefsger and was so often at his side that he referred to her as his “angel.”
Trefsger himself was there, in a way. A small gold box containing his ashes sat on a wide window ledge off in a corner, surrounded by memorabilia, including his tweed cap, a souvenir shirt from his visit to the Grand Ole Opry, “live at the Mermaid” CDs on which he played, and a cluster of snapshots.
One by one, the people who loved him stood to share their memories and tributes.
Fiddler Kay Gering recalled a man who, even in the toughest time of his life, found room in his heart for everyone. Seeing him in the nursing home where he spent his final months and seeing how he responded to his many visitors, she said, “made me see the grace a person can have in the most difficult situations. Don had a beautiful soul in him. His spirit just came out in that difficult process.”
Sal Roggio, pastor of the Cumberland County Community Church, where Trefsger played in the musical group, recalled times when he would just sit with him between services and talk about music and life. Little did he know how much that life was going to change.
Visiting him in the nursing home, Roggio said, he saw Trefsger in his darker moments. But he came to terms with his fate, he noted, and certain hymns spoke to him, especially “Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine.”
In coming to grips with his own sense of loss, Roggio perhaps spoke for everyone in the room. “He was only with us a short time,” he said, “but he left a big footprint. He left a mark.”