Words may escape her at 90. But this singer takes the stage again in Plymouth.

PLYMOUTH — Gina Weigand fretted whether, at 90, she could really return to a stage after decades of being away.

At her bedside in a senior apartment complex in Plymouth, she’d been practicing old songs that have long been in her repertoire. She started crooning in her early teens, when her dad would take her to taverns near their home in Kankakee, Ill., then sang for a 1940s-era orchestra band.

Now, at moments, it had become persistently difficult to complete a sentence. These aren’t just senior moments.

“It’s scary when you forget the words,” she said, unable to read because of another new challenge: poor vision. “Songs you haven’t sung for 50 years. That’s why I almost told her I wasn’t going to try it.”

By "her,” she means Kim Morrison, a volunteer coordinator for the Center for Hospice Care, who’s been spending social time with Weigand.

Just last week, as they chatted about the old songs, Morrison proposed that Weigand sing a few songs at Wednesday’s open mic for a small, friendly audience at Wild Rose Moon. The cozy nonprofit venue in downtown Plymouth shows off regional talent.

Morrison and Weigand’s son both tried to ease her reluctance: “Don’t worry, nobody is going to care if you forget the words.”

When Weigand is with a group of people, son Scott Mear said, “Most of them won’t even realize she has dementia. Something triggers in her and she goes right along.”

She is in the early stages of dementia. She’s aware of it and even told The Tribune — there by the stage at Wild Rose Moon — “I had someone come tell me yesterday how this works in the brain.”

“It comes and it goes,” she explained about the songs and the lyrics that she practices.

Melodies are there, but sometimes she substitutes the words — as she said, “I get something to fill it with.”

As the disease progresses, it’s common for people with dementia to use alternative words in their vocabulary as they try to sincerely make a point. It’s unpredictable, and the frustrations can turn days into roller-coasters.

But Wednesday was a good day. As about 20 people watched, Weigand didn’t seem to miss a word on all three of her songs.

To put her at ease, Morrison – who worked as an elementary school music teacher for about 20 years in Culver and Plymouth — led off with a Christmas tune. As a hospice co-worker played on the keyboard, Morrison sang alongside Weigand on “Winter Wonderland” and “Let it Snow.”

Then, as it was announced that she’d sing “All of Me,” Weigand asked the audience with a spark, “Is that great or good?”

Her old stage self was back. She breathed life into the tune, her voice lingering with inflections on certain notes.

Afterwards, she admitted that it was “terrible” coming to that point but added, “It was fun. It was alright once I got there.”

In fact, she was thrilled.

An open stage

Weigand wasn’t the first person with impairments to visit or perform music, theater, dance, poetry or comedy at the Wild Rose Moon.

Plymouth: Pandemic leads to new digital performances at Wild Rose Moon

Executive Director George Schricker mentioned a man who suffered a brain injury in a bad car accident but who often comes to sing, always on pitch.

Then again, he added, musicians often write and perform songs as therapy.

“My wife is a counselor,” Schricker noted. “What we well know is that 95% of the world is somewhat impaired, be it emotional gunk.”

For years, one man would regularly take his wife, who had dementia, to sit and enjoy open mic nights and other live music.

“She took so much from it,” Schricker recalled of the woman, who has since died. “She always had a huge smile on her face and moved her body.”

And there’s a 98-year-old woman who still joins in improv comedy sessions, as recently as this past Monday.

Music is good therapy for dementia — often outlasting facts, names and words. Morrison gets it. She often brings her ukulele or electric keyboard when she visits clients to screen them for a volunteer in the counties around Plymouth and LaPorte.

Hospice organizations and businesses assist many people who, like Weigand, aren’t terminal but need some extra help.

'Wants to be on her own'

Weigand lives by herself, fixing her own meals (often a heated-up TV dinner) with daytime visitors through the week.

“She still wants to be on her own,” said Mear, 65, who lives in Plymouth as his sister lives in Florida and a brother in Cincinnati.

He recalls a mother who was always singing around the house when he was growing up — with whatever she was doing to pass time. They’d be driving on a vacation and a song would play on the car’s radio; she’d sing along.

She’d croon songs by Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. Her voice reminded Mear most of Fitzgerald.

“I always remember that she had such a beautiful voice,” Mear said.

Starting in high school, she sang for about four years with the Downbeats, an orchestra band with 15 members that director Chuck Granger started in 1943 at St. Patrick High School in Kankakee, Ill.

An old photo shows her with the band in 1944. The band would travel to the Chicago area and other parts of Illinois and Indiana.

“I was doing it because I liked to sing,” she told The Tribune. “The orchestra liked me, and I liked them. And the audience enjoyed it.”

Singing with the band, she recalled, made her feel “fantastic.”

She moved on from the band, which, by one account, would become one of the youngest professional orchestra bands in the U.S. Instead, she opted to get married and have a family.

Later, when Mear was young and the family was living in Saginaw, Mich., Weigand took lead roles in community theater productions of the musicals “South Pacific” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

And there were many other times when, whether the family was eating at a hotel or a friend was at a piano, everyone would turn to her for a song.

She didn’t go to college and, Mear said, “As far as I know, she never had a voice lesson.”

In fact, she picked up skills on her own for careers in furniture and decorating, and as director of a hotel’s banquet center in the Quad Cities at the Iowa-Illinois border.

For many years, high school reunions kept her in touch with old band mates, most of whom have died.

These days, Weigand listens to a jazz swing songs through a channel on her TV. She’ll occasionally sing along to songs that she knows. She and Mear will be in a conversation and she'll burst into song when she overhears a tune.

“These songs are so much a part of her,” he said, admitting that he favors big band tunes because his mother brought them into his childhood.

On Wednesday night, once Weigand was done singing, she intently watched the other performers, starting with her grandson, Mear’s son Ryan, as he strummed guitar and sang his own songs.

Maybe he gets it from his grandma, but he also runs sound and lights and assists with livestream productions at Wild Rose Moon.

Will Weigand come perform at open mic again?

“Oh certainly,” she said.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Dementia singer of Downbeats takes on Plymouth's Wild Rose Moon stage