By Terry R. Shaw
One December morning 14 years ago, I opened the Willmar newspaper and read an article about a man named Leo Gruber who happened to live in the Prairie Home Cottages in Willmar. I was amazed to read and learn that Leo’s great-great-great-grandfather was Franz Gruber who wrote one of the best loved Christmas carols of all time, “Silent Night.” I had sung the song hundreds of times as a youth and as an adult serenading seniors in nursing homes. It is the world’s most recorded Christmas song, with more than 137,000 known recordings.
I decided to call Leo and see if I could come to his apartment and talk with him. He graciously let me come over that same morning. When I knocked on his door, he and his wife Marge invited me in and asked if I’d like some coffee. We sat, drank coffee, and talked for a while. Leo stunned me by telling me that he had been born on Christmas Day in 1917. We talked more about that famous song, what it meant to him, and Leo’s connection to it. I noticed Leo’s accordion on the floor near his easy chair. “I see you play accordion,” I said. “Would you mind if I go out to my car and get my guitar and sing ‘Silent Night’ along with you? It would mean so much to me.” “Oh sure, that’d be okay,” Leo answered me. I rushed out to my car, brought in the guitar and sat in a chair by Leo. “Leo,” I said, “I happen to know the German words to ‘Silent Night.’ Can I sing it that way?” “Sure.”
So, Leo played his accordion, and I played my guitar, and we sang “Stille Nacht, heiliga nacht.” We did the song a couple of times, and I said, “Leo, I can’t tell you what this means to me.” He was all smiles, and his wife grinned at me. “It’s been a treat for us too,” she said. “Leo, I have a special request for you. I’m going to play guitar and sing ‘Silent Night’ in our church on Christmas Eve the way it was originally done on Christmas Eve in Austria. It would be so wonderful if I could introduce you to the congregation and do the song together with you on the altar. Would you be willing to come to the church with me?”
“Well,” Leo said, “I always spend Christmas Eve with my daughter in Paynesville, so I guess it wouldn’t work.” “Say no more,” I said to Leo. “Family always comes first when making any decisions in life.” We sang and played a couple of other songs on his accordion and my guitar, such as “You Are My Sunshine,” and then I said, “Well, I’d better get going, but sincerely Leo, this has been a wonderful gift you’ve given me, and I feel honored and blessed to meet you and sing with you. Thank you so much.” I left thinking I couldn’t wait to get home to tell my wife about my experience.
As a young child growing up on the family farm in Crow River Township, Leo had found his first accordion, broken and discarded, on a rock pile by a neighbor’s farm. He picked it up and took it to the farmhouse, asking if he could have it. The lady of the house said, “Sure, but it doesn’t work you know.” Leo ran home with it and he and his mother taped it up. Leo was able to get a sound out of it. He kept tweaking it and then he taught himself to play it by ear. He was asked to play “Silent Night” on it for his school Christmas program that year. He did it every year after that. Then, in the 1930s or 1940s, Leo decided to trace his roots back and he found out that he was indeed related to the Austrian composer Franz Gruber who had written the song in 1818.
A couple of years after my encounter with Leo, I heard that he had gone to the Koronis Manor nursing home in Paynesville. Then, just a year or so later, I heard that Leo had died on February 5, 2015, at the age of 97. He was buried in Belgrade, near where he and Marge had farmed. Marge had preceded Leo in death in 2014.
“Sleep in tenderly peace,” Leo, “sleep in tenderly peace.”
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