Connie Converse: The Musician That Disappeared Before She Was Famous
Elizabeth Eaton Converse was born on August 3rd, 1924 in Laconia, New Hampshire. She came from an English family with roots in New England, where he father was a minister. Elizabeth was the middle child, and only daughter of Ernest and Evelyn Converse. She was preceded by her older Paul, and when she was five years old, her younger brother Philip was born.
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| 1930 Census |
Eventually Elizabeth's father would direct his state chapter of the Anti-Saloon league, the group that wanted to keep prohibition alive. It is unknown what Mr. Converse did after the dissolution of the league in 1933 after the repeal of the 18th amendment (which banned alcohol in America), since the 1940 census records stated that he was unemployed; though interestingly enough, his wife was listed as an engineer for the railroad, so I do wonder if this is an error.
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| 1940 Census |
Elizabeth was extremely successful in school, having had a poem in 7th grade published in her local paper. Philip has recalled memories of his sister fondly, such as when she painted a wall with the life sized portrait of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, that was later used as a background for performances for her brothers. She later graduated as valedictorian from high school, and later was awarded scholarships to go to college. Elizabeth went to the same college that he mother and grandmother went to, Mount Holyoke. Eventually, she dropped out and moved to New York City to pursue a music career.
The change in her life upset her parents, who were described as "heartbroken", and "assumed she was running away from them." by her younger brother Philip.
When Elizabeth moved to New York, she got a job at the Institute of Pacific Studies, and found an apartment on Grove Street in Greenwich Village. Eventually she started creating music, after teaching herself guitar, and made friends in the new city. Her friends started calling her Connie, and she wrote a plethora of poems. While making friends, and living with a new crowd, Connie picked up smoking and drinking, something completely opposite from the values that her father (who was part of a prohibition group) raised them with.
Eventually, she met Gene Deitch, a WWII veteran that would invite Connie over to record at his home. Sometimes she would be recorded in front of friends. Many of her songs were poems that she wrote, set to music.
In 1954, Connie appeared on the CBS Morning Show with Walter Cronkite, though the appearance did not attract much attention. Her own parents did not even watch the show.
In August of 1956, Connie sent her brother Philip an album she created called, 'Musicks (Volumes I and II). She left a message that read, "These reels are strewn with minor mishaps. On the other hand, they’re not so bad. With love and modest pride, Elizabeth Converse, August 1956.".
While unknown when Ernest, Connie's father, died, he passed never hearing her music.
Even though Connie tried very hard to get some sort of attention, her efforts yielded not contracts.
In 1961, Connie moved to Ann Arbor to be near her brother Philip, who was a professor at the university. She found a job at the Journal of Conflict Resolution as a secretary, then moved on to be an editor. She wrote for the journal, but never wrote anymore music. Connie's friends wrote her, but she almost stopped talking to her New York friends entirely.
Philip, stated that she seemed really hurt that she didn't make it. During the ten years that she worked at the Journal, she "started growing tired of the routine". Her depression increased over the years, and eventually her co-workers pooled enough money to send her on a sabbatical to London for 8 months. While she came back having enjoyed her time in Europe, it did little to change her demeanor.
Months after, Connie's mother invited her on a trip to Alaska with a friend. She initially didn't want to go on the trip, since she wouldn't be able to smoke or drink around two old women. Connie went anyway, stating, "I wanna go to Alaska like I wanna go to the basement!" as the cab taking her left for the airport.
Of course, the trip to Alaska did not help her either. Once they came back from Alaska, her mother started planning another long trip. Her brother Philip thinks that this may have been what put her over the edge, the idea of having to spend more alone time with her mother.
It was also during this time, that Connie found out that she needed hysterectomy. This piece of news was extremely hard on her. And while she never married or ever had children, Philip has said that Connie loved children.
It should also be noted that, Philip, her brother that she seemed most close to in her family, never even met a suitor during his time around Connie. He never knew if she was a lesbian, though the thought has crossed his mind. Apparently, Connie was very private about her personal life, would respond to any questions with a very curt 'yes' or 'no'. In the documentary about her, Connie's nephew stated that there isn't any evidence that she had ever even had a romantic relationship.
Which, not to derail too much from the timeline, but I want to go over her song lyrics a little bit.
While not having had any record of a relationship, her songs from 50's talked a little bit about love and people that she had seemed to know. Her arguably most popular song, 'Talkin like you (Two Tall Mountains)', has a part that says,
"Up that tree there’s sort of a squirrel thing
Sounds just like we did when we were quarreling
You may think you left me all alone
But I can hear you talk without a telephone
I don’t stand in the need of company
With everything I see
Talkin’ like you"
Which to me, sounds like at one point she may have had something with someone, and eventually the broke up. It's possible she wrote that poem about them because she missed them.
And in her song 'Roving Woman', there is a part that goes:
A lady never should habituate saloons
And that is where I find myself on many afternoons
But just as I begin to blow away the foam
Someone tips his hat to me and takes me home
Where it sounds a lot like herself, where she liked to drink. The song sounds like she was writing about herself, and how she knew that, in the culture she was raised in, smoking, drinking, and pre-marital sex were things that she shouldn't partake of.
More than anything, I think that she spent her time in New York not just trying to make it big, but also trying to find herself too.
In 1974, right before her 50th birthday, Connie wrote letters to her family and friends, where she applauded the downfall of Richard Nixon, and she was going to head west in her VW Bug. Her brother Philip stated that she was going to leave earlier, but she stopped to watch the news, since this was the time where Nixon's scandal was going on.
But eventually, Connie did drive away, and she never came back.
Before leaving, in her letters, she advised Philip to pay her health insurance with a set amount of money that she left behind, up until a certain point. In the letter, it stated that if she still needed him to pay it after that point, she would let him know, but he never heard from her again.
A couple of years after her disappearance, someone that knew Philip said that they found the name 'Elizabeth Converse' in the phone book, though they couldn't remember if the name was from Oklahoma or Kansas. Either way, Philip did not pursue the lead, since he felt that leaving was her choice.
When I searched the census records for a potential match on this name, I personally did not see anyone named Elizabeth Converse that would have corresponded with Connie. I saw close names for Kansas, but those people seemed have had families, and Connie of course, never had any children.
Around ten years later from her disappearance, Philip hired a private investigator to try and find his sister, though the investigator told him, "even if he did find her, it was her right to disappear, and he could not simply bring her back." From that point on, Philip and his family respected her wishes to disappear, and have contemplated the possibilities that happened to her.
Philip thinks that she may have committed suicide, perhaps by driving her car into the river, since neither her nor her car have ever been found. Philip thinks that the possibility is there, since in the past when he was 11 years old, there was a girl who was a friend of his sister's that committed suicide. While everyone else in the community were angry and resented the girl that took her own life, Philip remembers Connie stating that "the decision to take one’s own life was very personal, and She very much believed-even back then-that if anything should be left up to a person, it was whether or not to live.”
Ever since her disappearance, not a single soul that knew Connie beforehand ever heard or saw of her again. Except one person.
On the podcast 'Spinning on air', a friend of Connie's appeared, telling a story about how Connie convinced her to marry her second husband, who she divorced 3 months later. The friend stated that after the divorce, Connie called her, saying that she was sorry for ever recommending the man, because she was only thinking about how her friend would have been good for the man, and not her friend. This friend also stated that she doesn't remember exactly when the call took place, though she thought that it was about 1975, or 1976 (If we knew when this marriage started and ended in divorce, that would probably help a lot too).
Overall, no-one that knew Connie in either her New York life, or Michigan life, ever saw her again. But that does bring up the question, where did she go?
If we think about her letters, and what happened to her, I think we can say that she stayed in the United States until at least the insurance ran out. There are plenty of people that know about this case online, and some think that she potentially took a plane to Europe after she sent her family the letters. Though, why would she tell her brother to pay her insurance, if she were just going to bail the country anyway? So in my personal opinion, I think that she stayed in the US.
Thankfully, Connie, or Elizabeth, has been entered into NamUS, where she can be found online on the database. Here, we can find more details about her that we didn't know before. According to the database, she was rather tall, between 5'7" and 5'10", and weighed anywhere between 140 and 170 pounds.
I did some looking, and there is one unidentified body that seems similar to her description on the database close to the area where she was last seen. On May 6th, 1977, a white female was found in the Detroit River, 1/2 a mile east of Grassy Island. Her hair was gray to partially gray, had a scar on the right side of the neck that was 3" from the ear to the eye. She is listed as 5'6", between the ages of 50-65, and 142 pounds. The case number is 77-3205. While there aren't any pictures of this doe, the Wyandotte doe (as I'm calling her), has features that are very similar to Connie's. Even further, this doe was located not far from Ann Arbor, which is a close drive to Detroit.
Alternatively, there are people who think that Connie could be another doe, that some call the Fairfax doe. This doe was found in Fairfax, Virginia on December 18, 1996. This doe was between the ages of 50-70 years old, weight 157 pounds, had curly auburn hair, and had an 8 in. scar on her stomach, which is stated as possibly being from a C-section.
According to doenetwork.org, Fairfax doe was found under these circumstances:
A groundskeeper at the Pleasant Valley Memorial Park Cemetery discovered the decedent's body near the section of the cemetery where infants are buried, but not near any particular grave.There was a clear plastic sheet on the ground with an 8-inch Christmas tree adorned with gold balls and red ribbons. She had a portable tape player with headphones, which were on her ears. A recording of comedians Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner doing their 2000 Year Old Man routine was in the player.She had committed suicide by drinking brandy (she had a 0.14 blood-alcohol level), swallowing Valium, and placing a plastic bag over her head and tying it off with tape, suffocating herself.She left two fifty dollar bills; one for the coroner,and one for the cemetery, both with the same typed note: Deceased by own hand...prefer no autopsy. Please order cremation with funds provided. Thank you, Jane Doe.She had no receipts in her pockets for investigators to trace her movements. Most of the headstones nearby where she was found were fairly recent. The site would probably not be known to a drifter.
Fairfax doe's case number is N1996-41257.
While Fairfax doe may not add up in height, there are many who still believe in her being a possibility since the artist recreation seems so similar to Connie Converse. What is interesting to me, is that this Doe left behind a note stating no autopsy, and a poem.
Even further, there are dentals and fingerprints of this doe, yet 23 years later, there haven't been any clues as to who she is. What is interesting to me, is how this doe was found near where infants were buried, and it was stated in the past that Connie loved children.
As a final point, years later in 2004 Gene Deitch appeared on NPR radio playing a few tracks of Connie's, which people loved. Eventually, an album was released in 2009, with the tracks that she recorded under him, and people have been listening to her ever since.
What I find interesting about this, is that at this point, her music was finally out to the world. In my opinion, if she were still alive, I think that she would have come forward once Gene played her music for all the world to see. With the invention of the internet, she has a following of people all over. In other words, I think that by the time Gene played her music online, she may have already been dead.
Perhaps in some way, Gene played her music so that she could come forward, if she was still around. At the time, she would have been 85. But even ten years later from the album being out, no one has ever heard from her it almost feels safe to say that she may not be with us anymore.
In conclusion:
Understanding Connie's family, and the religious way she was raised, I can understand why she fled to New York to pursue her dreams. Literally having a father that campaigned for Prohibition, it wouldn't be hard to imagine that her parents were completely opposed to her smoking and drinking habits.
Even though we don't have any proof of her being in any relationships with anyone, we have her poetry where she wrote about thinking of someone. If she was lesbian, it was during a time that homosexuality was no-where near accepted as it is today, especially since she came from such a conservative and prude background.
Perhaps, when she didn't gain the success that she sought, she felt that her parents were "right after all", and so she came home to family, and worked with her brother.
While we don't know what the conversations with her mother were like, I feel like it wouldn't be far to imagine that, even in her 40's, Connie's mother nagged her about habits that just did not fit in to her lifestyle. The trip to Alaska was the last straw, and she had had enough. And didn't want any more from her family.
We don't know which way she went, or if she even committed suicide. Though, if Connie wanted to start a completely new life, where she could really be herself, she felt like she had to cut all ties from the people she used to know. If Connie stayed around for a while, it's possible that she went to California, where she could be the woman she wanted to be. Perhaps she changed her name altogether, at a time where documentation wasn't so demanded as it today.
All we know, that is. if she is still around...she does not want to be found.
video: https://youtu.be/btTtX6L1U8g
[SOURCES]
https://www.theawl.com/2010/08/the-story-of-connie-converse/
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/245ufva.html
https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/6279/details
https://www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/12059?nav
https://www.namus.gov/MissingPersons/Case#/23656
https://spinningonair.org/episode-6-connie-converse-let-me-be-if-i-can-part-2/ (approx 39 minutes)
