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Stan Case
1959 -2003
| Stan Case’s life was one of grace, service, and kindness – shared
powerfully through music, theater, and his selfless caring for others. He was an
unwavering friend to an astounding number of people. |
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Stan
Darole Case was born April 26th, 1959, in North Carolina, the
eldest of four children of a truck driver and a Christian Science practitioner.
“He was my quiet one,“ Sue Case said of her firstborn, “…my calm,
gentle one.” From
the earliest times, Stan’s life was one of contradictions. A look at his
“day jobs” throughout his life gives no indication of the high level
of his artistic achievement. Stan was, at various times, a truck driver, mover,
security guard, and, most recently, a warehouseman. Similarly, while he was a man of great physical bravery (with knifing
scars on his torso and a bullet lodged in his ankle from his security guard days
to prove it), it was gentleness and kindness that endeared him to so many
people.
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Possibly the most eloquent testament to Stan’s temperament
was his ability to remain good-natured while enduring years of excruciating
pain. In 1984, four days before his 26th birthday, Stan was at an El
Cajon gas station on his motorcycle when a truck struck him and catapulted him
over his handlebars. Having suffered critical head injuries, Stan was not only
alive, but was cracking jokes with the amazed helicopter paramedics on the way
to the hospital. He awoke from a week-long coma after lengthy surgery - at half
of his former weight - with a steel plate in his skull. Stan lived the rest of
his life with crushing headaches, and it was perhaps his own endurance of
unrelenting pain that gave him so much empathy for others. |
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Stan
Case was best known for his incredible singing voice and his magnetic stage
presence. His performances in opera,
musicals, and the oratorio repertoire are too numerous to list. Beginning in
young adulthood with the San Diego Opera Company, Starlight Opera, San Diego Gilbert and
Sullivan, Grossmont Opera, and The Old Globe Theater, Stan sang roles ranging
from Tevye to Sarastro.
In
1987, by way of the Ananda Center in San Diego, Stan began his long association
with the Community of Ananda in Nevada City, CA. Living at the Ananda Community
during the late eighties,
he not only developed spiritually, but also made enduring friendships with many
of the members. In the early nineties he relocated to Sonoma
County where he said the lower elevation “…was a little easier on my
head.”
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Stan's voice was much in demand in Sonoma County, where he sang with the
Northern California Chamber Chorale, Choral Artists of California, the
Grainger Singers, and lastly with "his family," Quire
Quodlibet.
He
sang with Pocket Opera in San Francisco in the role of Melisso in their
production of Alcina, and in
the role of Dr. Dulcamara in their Elixir of
Love. At the Larkspur Dinner Theater, Stan had a successful run as Smudge in
Forever Plaid.
But it was Cinnabar Opera Theater in Petaluma that was Stan’s operatic
home. He performed there frequently in many roles, among them the
title roles in Don Pasquale and Falstaff,
as well as Colline in La Bohème,
Don Basilio in The Barber of
Seville, and the Father in The Secret
Marriage. |
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On
February 22nd of 2003, Stan suffered a massive heart attack while
already in
the hospital. During his recovery, Stan came to understand
why he was “called back:” the great lesson that Stan learned during the last
month of his life was how much he was loved and appreciated, and just how deeply
he had touched the lives of those around him. Stan Case, who had
thought of himself as a loner, came to know that he was not alone.
He
left this earth on March 26, 2003.
At Stan’s
request, his ashes were taken to the Ananda Community in Nevada City. They rest
there under a tree planted in his honor. |
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