Mel Hancock

D ADE CITY - In telling the tale of Mel Hancock, the multifaceted troubadour from Davenport near Haines City, it is difficult to know where to begin.Shall we start with Cathy, the girl he loved in high school, the girl he lost, the woman whom he finally married a lifetime later?Or do we begin with how he was downsized into an improbable new career?
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Here, where Mel Hancock wept.Yes.That's the place.

Knowing that Hurricanes Charley and Frances whacked the Hancocks' Central Florida mobile home pretty hard, residents and staff at Royal Oak and two sister facilities contributed to a hasty fundraising effort, and presented the proceeds - something more than $300 - Wednesday.

For a generator, they explained.Because Cathy and Mel had been without power for eight days after Charley barreled through last month, and his chosen, if unusual, profession as a nursing home entertainer leaves little hedge money for emergencies.

Thus did Mel, and Cathy, perhaps the only woman he ever really loved, weep.

"Tears of joy," Mel explained to an audience of more than three dozen people as he plucked at the Martin, trying to regain his composure.

Cathy, who had been at her husband's side during the investiture, retreated to a corner, wiping her eyes with tissues.

Of Course He Takes Requests
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Mel Hancock loves them right back.Every third Wednesday of every month, Mel shows up, usually with Cathy and always with the Martin, the well-loved instrument he sought almost as long as he did Cathy.Says Mel, "It's the guitar of my dreams; it feels good, like it's part of me."

Together, the M&M boys perform an hour or so of tunes ranging from country to bluegrass to early rock 'n' roll to gospel, transporting the residents - few of whom haven't seen their 70th birthday - to the places of their youth.It is a helpful place for them to go, spiritually lifted from their wheelchairs and freed from the medical paraphernalia that eases their aches and complaints.

"As long as you remember things," Mel says during a story, "you've still got them."Audience members - those for whom Mel's songs are not an effective lullaby, anyway - nod in unison; of all their possessions, their memories are the most precious.

Oh, how Mel helps them remember.About long-ago dances, picnics, ballgames, long walks, going to church, and the tenderness of sweethearts.Happy, healthy times.Choosing as the spirit moves him among some 600 songs he performs from memory, he teases the audience along.
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Always a dabbler in music, earning extra money at weekend bluegrass festivals and playing bass guitar for bands that performed past midnight, Mel took up singing and strumming full time when he lost his job as a rose garden groundskeeper in a wave of Tupperware downsizing nine years ago.

It was also about that time Cathy's father suffered a stroke and moved into a nearby nursing home.After Mel's first performance there, he and Cathy hatched his new career.Now he entertains at 90 nursing homes and retirement centers, asking desperately low fees and making himself all but indispensable to 90 activities directors.

"They check the schedule every month," Potter says of Royal Oak residents, "and if Mel wasn't on there, I'd be attacked."

Performing at two centers daily every weekday, Mel is booked through the end of 2005.He shrugs.It's Cathy, for whom he tumbled, everlastingly, at 18 - only to be spurned by her parents until both were in their 40s - who does the hard work, Mel says, keeping the books, tracking his schedule, and traveling the central state at his side.

Sixteen years into the marriage both always wanted, "I want to be with him," she says adoringly."We have 23 years to catch up on."

"Besides," Mel adds, "when she's not here, everybody wants to know, `Where's Cathy?' " It's cozier, sure, but also easier, to bring her along.

If the Hancocks aren't growing wealthy in worldly goods, they are rich in the intangibles that matter.When the power went out, a neighbor with a generator ran an extension cord to their bedroom, where it powered a fan that made sleeping bearable.When news of their hardship spread among the folks of Royal Oak, Zephyr Haven and a third, preferring to remain anonymous, nursing home, these folks who have little enough themselves vowed not to see two of their favorite people suffer through another electricity drought.

So Cathy and Mel wept.Good tears.Happy tears.Tears to demonstrate that love is a two-way street.Play on, Mel Hancock.