Robert Larson had plenty of memories to offer as he prepares to celebrate his 100th birthday on Wednesday. Some of the stories he shared when we sat down to visit at his home – at Covenant Living at the Holmstad in Batavia – were about a childhood during the Depression in Chicago with parents who emigrated from Sweden. Larson also has plenty to say about his 35 years as a minister – in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Rhode Island – mostly at smaller churches where he would often do double duty as pastor and choir director.
In addition to his deep Christian faith, music has always been one of this man’s great passions – a love that started with a used cornet his machinist dad bought for him for $8 from a merchant on Maxwell Street in Chicago. Larson credits a music teacher who played French horn in the Chicago Women’s Symphony – along with his mother’s and sister’s housekeeping and babysitting money that paid for those lessons – for his musical abilities that so clearly impacted his life. The retired reverend’s faith may have saved his soul, but it was his budding talents on this trumpet-like instrument that saved him from schoolyard bullies, who stopped teasing him about his thick glasses once they heard the sweet sounds he could produce in those solos at all-class assemblies.
“I developed more confidence,” he said with a smile. “It was beautiful to see.” Music also played into Larson’s fate as the United States became drawn into World W.