“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”
Beverly Sills (1929-2007)
Born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn to immigrant parents from Ukraine, Sills won her first singing contest at age three and would go on to win first place on both the Major Bowles Amateur Hour and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, the American Idol of their day. She broke into opera in the late forties, specializing in the work of Donizetti, Rossini and Massenet, and by 1971 appeared on the cover of Time Magazine as “America’s Queen of the Opera”, despite limiting her career to spend more time at home with her children, both born with disabilities. She retired from singing in 1980, but continued in the public eye, first as director of the New York City Opera, then Chair of Lincoln Center, and finally of the Metropolitan Opera, while simultaneously offering her celebrity to the March of Dimes and other charities. She was the recipient of four honorary doctorates, multiple Emmy and Grammy nominations, and the 1980 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Good Morning Gloucester 