For Long Islanders of a certain age, these love songs take them back

Love songs can set the tone for Valentine’s Day, conveying romance, passion and heartfelt connection.

For Long Islanders of a certain age, these tunes can be the soundtrack of their most memorable romantic journeys, taking them back to first dances, first dates and happy times in a marriage.

Those divorced or widowed said a go-to love ballad can bring hope that love awaits them again.

And for others, favorite love songs are painful to hear, reminding them of a joyful time in their lives long past.

Music is part of the human experience, an integral part of human life.

- Elizabeth K. Schwartz, creative arts and music therapist

“Music is part of the human experience, an integral part of human life, and, with few exceptions, people relate to music in a very particular way,” said Elizabeth K. Schwartz, a creative arts and music therapist who teaches at Molloy University in Rockville Centre.

Love songs have the most staying power if they tugged on the heartstrings in the adolescent and teenage years — “when they’re having a growth spurt and music feeds into the intense emotion and awareness of the world,” Schwartz said.

And because songs have a repetitive structure, “it’s easy not only to anticipate and remember them, but recall their emotional connection to a specific event,” she said.

First-ever couple’s dance

The Rev. Nicole Mitchell, 54, remembers when “Tender Love,” now a 40-year-old ballad, first made its way to her heart to become her forever favorite.

At the time, Mitchell, who has been married and divorced twice, was 14 and a teen youth group member attending a holiday disco party. The Force MD’s song, which conveys a deep yearning for love and affection, began to play. As she watched her peers pair up for the event’s first couple’s dance, she stood on the sidelines, alone, until a boy asked her to join him, she said.

“It was the first time a boy ever asked me to dance,” she said. “I don’t remember what he looked like, but I do remember the song and my dress — it was a pink-and-white knit. We only had that one dance, but whenever I hear that song, I always remember how I felt, which was very special for being chosen.”

For her first marriage, she asked the DJ to find “Tender Love” and play it during the cake-cutting ceremony.

Today, “Tender Love” is saved on her phone in a playlist marked “Love,” with Mitchell tuning into the song about once every two weeks while driving from her North Babylon home to Queens, where her daughter and grandson live.

“I listen to it to stay awake or calm down,” said Mitchell, who is a special education administrator in the New York City Department of Education and is executive pastor at Bethel AME in Copiague.

The song “makes me hopeful that I will find love again,” she said.

Memories of a Marriage

After her 20-year marriage ended in divorce, Daryl Jordan, 83, said she did not expect to connect with someone again. But, thanks to a mutual friend’s introduction, the East Patchogue resident met Herman Washington, and they enjoyed a 30-year marriage until his death nearly three years ago.

Since then the song, “Memories of You,” which has been sung by performers including Ella Fitzgerald and was one of her favorite love songs before meeting Washington, has become Jordan’s melodious sonnet to him.

Its opening verse, “Waking skies at sunrise . . . seems to [bring] me memories of you, now honey,” immediately turns Jordan’s thoughts to the wonderful life she and Washington had, including the good times they spent socializing with friends.

“Herman was just so charming, and people were drawn to him because of his openness and friendliness,” said Jordan, a longtime professional singer who retired 30 years ago as a choral and music teacher and orchestra director in the Islip school district.

Jordan’s earliest fascination with “Memories of You” began while she was growing up in Brooklyn, she said. Its renowned composer, Eubie Blake, had lived on the same block as her family, Jordan said, and he and his wife would attend her parents’ dinner parties.

Since the mid-1980s, Jordan has periodically sung “Memories of You” as her encore piece in her solo Portraits of a People concerts, which explore the Black experience in poetry and spiritual songs. Throughout the years, Jordan has performed the program in different venues, including public libraries, the Chautauqua Summer Music Festival in upstate New York and the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

Although the song today expresses her own longing for her beloved husband, the mother of two grown sons never shies away from singing it.

“The joy of music is that it takes you out of yourself and is a blessing,” Jordan said.

Still Dancing

After 40 years of marriage, three grown children and six grandkids, David and Denise Kaufman still dance in their Smithtown living room to the song that brought them together, Stevie Wonder’s “Ribbon in the Sky.”

The two had met as employees of an entertainment company, which performed at different gigs, including conventions, corporate events and bar and bat mitzvahs. Denise was a dancer, and David worked as a mime, juggler and magician.

At a particularly lavish affair, David and Denise spontaneously joined hands and danced to the song. A week later, they had their first date. Two years later, David proposed on Valentine’s Day.

“It was immediate that we were supposed to be together,” said Denise, 63, a teacher assistant in the Sachem school district.

At their wedding in 1985, the entertainment company’s band, Solid Gold, played “Ribbon in the Sky,” “because we loved that song so much,” said Denise. At the time, she was 23 and David, now 65 and an attorney, was 25.

With the Stevie Wonder lyrics describing an enduring love, David Kaufman said the song has traveled with them throughout their life together and continues to resonate with the couple.

“It makes me think of how far Denise and I have come, and what we’ve been through, and it’s all been happy,” said David, who has saved the song on his phone.

Denise added, “We just want to be together all the time, and we can’t wait to retire; we’ll be so good at that.”

The Effect of French Songs

For Lily Klima, French chanson music evokes memories of the 40-year relationship with her much-adored husband, Manford Klima, who died 18 years ago.

“Life is good, but I miss my husband terribly,” said Klima, 79, who lives in Centereach.

Klima said her husband hailed from Vienna but, 18 months before landing in New York, lived in Paris to learn French. There, he also developed an affinity for French chanson singers, which led him to collect vinyl records of the traditional lyric-driven songs and listen to them with her.

“Whenever I hear “La Vie En Rose” [Life Through Pink Glasses] — it gets to me now,” said the retired English and public speaking teacher. “It brings me back memories of when I was 20, 21 and 22 and I was dating Manny.”

Her husband, she said, had been married before they met and had a son. “He was starting his life over again, and I was 20 with no clue,” about the challenges that awaited them.

Meanwhile, the French chanson “Non, Je Ne Regret Rien” [No, I Regret Nothing] struck a chord with them both. Klima said Manny had little regret about divorcing his wife, and she had no second thoughts about marrying him despite her Jewish parents’ objections to the union.

“He was divorced with a son, six years older than me, a different religion and Germanic speaking, “ Klima said.

Klima’s parents eventually accepted the relationship, she said.

“I regretted nothing. I was head over heels in love,” said Klima, whose sponsorship helped her husband’s son immigrate to the United States. Today, from their daughter and Manny’s son, Klima has six grandchildren.

She said she doesn’t seek out that music.

“I have a full life, so it’s not that I purposely avoid the French songs — or any other French songs, but when I hear them, there’s a heartache and longing for my husband’s presence,” Klima said. “I just want to hold the music in the place where it’s in my heart.”

Unrequited love

When Deborah Boywah first heard the duet “Don’t Cry, Joni,” she was about 9 and spending the summer in Guyana, at her cousins’ country home. The ballad’s music and rhyming verses — about unrequited love — immediately appealed to Boywah, but “I didn’t get a chance to write down the lyrics,” said the West Babylon resident, an accounting manager at a CPA firm.

But about three years later, during another summer with her cousins, the Conway Twitty song came on the radio, and she recorded the ballad, jotted down the words and memorized them.

“The song hit home for me because I liked the story it was telling and the music was soothing,” said Boywah, 53, the mother of two daughters, ages 28 and 27, and a son, 17. The song doesn’t convey anything she has personally experienced, she said.

But as a lasting winner with Boywah, she has sung its lyrics privately and publicly throughout her teen and adult years — as a solo performer in school concerts and as a young mother lullabying her children to sleep; on family car trips; at karaoke parties and barbecues; and in her living room, with her husband, Ganesh, 49, or son Tadd, crooning the male reaction to Joni’s declaration of love. And sometimes at family gatherings, the Boywahs’ daughters have informally sung the duet with other male relatives.

“We’re musical, and singing Indian and old songs is one thing that bonds us together as a family,” said Boywah. “The song transcends the generations.”