Citizen of the World

by Bitsy Hawes Unangst ’89

I majored in history and English at Centre, but singing with Dr. Barbara Hall was my passion. By the end of my senior year, I was in rehearsal about 16 hours a week for four different choirs and voice class, and loving every minute of it. When I joined the Navy to become an intelligence officer, I knew my major courses would come in handy. But my music?

My studied language was French, but singing at Centre demanded great versatility. During my four years, we sang in Latin, Italian, German, French, and even Hebrew, as well as English. But two texts were to prove memorable for my Navy adventures: Johannes Brahms’s Liebeslieder Walzer, 24 lovely little waltzes in German for choir and duo piano, and the Italian songs we sang for voice classes.

The Italian text, G. Schirmer’s unmistakable yellow Twenty-Four Italian Songs and Arias of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries—what we privately referred to as the “Italian Top 40”—was inescapable at Centre. Week after week in Wednesday juries we listened to our fellow students tackle the vocal training standards: Scarlatti’s “Le Violette,” Monteverdi’s “Lasciatemi morire!,” Lotti’s “Pur dicesti, o bocca bella” . . . over and over and over again. Fortunately for me, some of the language stuck.

My vocally acquired Italian proved most helpful in Sicily, where I deployed with my squadron for six months. The maritime air base at Sigonella was near a little British Commonwealth World War II cemetery. One fine day in May, as I strolled up and down the rows of headstones, I waved to the two Italian laborers tending the gardens. To my surprise, they called me over. “American?” they asked me. “Si,” I replied, and they gestured for me to follow them. One of them ran ahead to a shed and brought back an American flag and a piece of paper for me to read.

The letter was from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, stipulating that the two Americans buried in the cemetery were to have American flags placed on their graves for the American Memorial Day—which was in a few weeks. My rudimentary Italian led me to understand that they only had one American flag, and could I help? “Si, si!” I assured them, and then asked, “Uh, dové?”

They led me to the northeastern corner of the cemetery, and there near the end of the first row were buried Lt. Fred Ranshaw Vance, who had flown with the Royal Canadian Air Force and been killed during the invasion of Sicily, and Lily True, an American nurse who had served with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. I assured the gardeners that I would bring back flags in time for Memorial Day, plus extra if I could get them, and I did. I thank Centre for helping me to honor the two properly.

But for sheer fun, the most memorable benefit of my vocal training at Centre came during a raucous evening reception celebrating the end of an annual NATO maritime exercise. This was no dress-whites occasion—the aircrews of the participating forces were responsible for supplying food and drink representative of their countries, and not to partake of everything the flight-suited fellows offered would have been a grave breach of etiquette.

After about two hours of French wine and pastry, Dutch beer and cheese, Norwegian aquavit and scrambled eggs with salmon, and Canadian “moose milk” with poutine (don’t ask), I made it to the German table (beer and sausages), where they took note of the name on my flight suit.

“Unangst? Unangst? Bist du Deutsche?” they asked (or words to that effect, anyway). “Sprechen sie Deutsch?” “Um, no,” I replied. “But, uh, ich singt auf Deutsch.” And, after only a little encouragement, singt I did.

The evening definitely proved memorable. My skipper later asked if I really spoke German. “Well, Sir,” I told him, “one of the things I sang was, ‘Carry me, my love, through the meadow in the moonlight, or the bitter dew will chill my tiny feet,’ and I have to say that I’ve found that to be a far more useful phrase during my Navy travels than something as mundane as, ‘Hey, cabbie, can you take me to the train station?’”

Thanks, Barbara Hall, and thanks, Centre, for making me a citizen of the world.

Elizabeth “Bitsy” Hawes Unangst ’89 served as an intelligence officer in the Navy for 51/2 years. She now lives with her husband and two sons near the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland.

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