A Christmas Legend

In Emmitsburg, something of a legend has grown up around a former flute player named Larry Dielman, who has been dead for over fifty years.

Music was in his blood from the very beginning. His father, Professor Casper Dielman, had been a noted composer and musician in Germany in the early 1800's. He came to America where he wrote inauguration marches for four presidents and led symphony orchestras in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore before settling in Emmitsburg to teach music at Mount Saint Mary’s College in 1834.

It was here in Emmitsburg, in 1838, that Larry was born. His father had high hopes for him as a classical musician, but Larry never quite measured up. Though he grew up in the shadow of his father, his younger days were for the most part gay and happy. Larry and the professor spent many fun-filled evenings at home entertaining guest with their musical compositions. As he grew older, he became quite popular with the college crowd, and enjoyed entertaining them. His colorful personality and flamboyant wardrobe attracted many of them to his small grocery store near the college. There, sitting on the porch, he would often make up songs on the spur of the moment and sing them to the pretty girls.

In his twenties, Larry found and married the girl of his dreams and settled down in a joyful life. The joy soon turned to bitterness, however, and his wife left him. There was now a touch of sadness in Larry’s life that was never to leave it. Those few residents who still remembered him recall the figure of a lonely old man sitting on the porch of his store with his banjo, singing of his long-lost love.

In 1885, the old professor died, and it was a sad Larry Dielman who took his flute to the cemetery to play the following Christmas. As strains of "When the Glory Lit the Mid-night Air", one of his father’s most famous compositions, cascaded down from the grave, the people of Emmitsburg thought he had finally mastered the flute in memory of his father. The town folk donned their coats and hats and made the steep journey to the gravesite by the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes.

The event became a tradition. Every year thereafter, Larry Dielman would lead a procession up the steep hill to the tiny gravesite and play beautiful, lilting music. In 1900, when the congregation moved from St. Mary’s to St. Anthony’s, where midnight Mass was held on Christmas Eve, Larry played at night as well as in the morning.

In later years, he was unable to make the steep climb and had to be taken by sled. Finally, in 1923, Larry Dielman died.

Oldtimers say that if you listen very carefully on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning you can still hear the ethereal strains of beautiful flute music floating down from the cemetery. A short time later, it is gone, not to be heard again for another year.