From Joy to Sorrow Judy Garland's Music Still Touches Lives

Some people feel their hearts skip a beat when they see a sunrise. Others might feel a personal connection by spotting the leap of a dolphin above the ocean. The hearbroken found it in the voice of Judy Garland.
Her name has been linked as much with her tragic story as with the enormous music library she left behind. But another segment of the population found comfort through the years with Garland's soulful sound. Her soul-piercing voice, despite the pain she obviously carried in her own heart, found a way to express the rainbow of emotions - from joy to sorrow - that life often brings.
There's even a flower named after her - the Judy Garland Timeless Rose - with its vibrant mix of cheerful yellow and red-hot crimson blooms.
Then, of course, there was also the movie.
"Many trauma treatment centers have pictures of Dorothy, with all of 'The Wizard of Oz' characters around her," said Darlene Dezso, a Dothan social worker who specializes in childhood trauma.
"I definitely think there's a cognitive and soulful connection between many people who experienced abuse in childhood and the movie, mainly because Dorothy had been wounded and was searching herself. Many people I work with are really searching, trying to make sense of their suffering. But all the time healing is within them, just as Dorothy came to find that it was always within herself."
It's no secret that Dothan's Patti Rutland Simpson is a big "Wizard of Oz" fan. She named her dance studio, which she's operated in Dothan for 15 years, after the movie. Pictures of Dorothy dominate the walls of the Honeysuckle Road studio, along with a curio cabinet with "Oz" memorabilia.
Simpson is also writing a book, "Finding Oz," about her recovery from divorce that uses lessons from the movie with chapter themes such as "There's a Storm Brewing," "Courage," "Use Your Brain," and "Stay Out of the Poppy Field."
"I think the reason the movie has been such a success for as long as it has is every person from young to old can relate to it," Simpson said. "It's magic for the children, but also contains lessons for us adults."
Perhaps it's appropriate that the star of the most successful children's movie of all time has a children's museum named for her in Garland's hometown.
John Kelsch, director of The Judy Garland Children's Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn., said it was only natural.
"Judy Garland had a lifelong interest in children," Keltsch said. "She always made a point of visiting children's hospitals and even made a movie with Burt Lancaster, "A Child is Waiting," that broke ground because it was the first film that dealt with mental retardation.
"But it wasn't just children. Judy was always interested in people who don't have the capacities most of us take for granted. I really don't want to speculate on why people feel the way they do about her. Judy just touched everybody."
There are also millions of people who were touched by "Oz." A book by Joy Miller and Marianne Ripper, "Following the Yellow Brick Road - The Adult Child's Personal Journey Through Oz," details the characteristics and needs that children of dysfunctional families share with characters in the movie.
Michella Lee is also a big "Oz" fan. As a local counselor, she sometimes asks clients to talk about the "Oz" character they identify with the most.
"I was probably 11 or 12 when I first saw it, and intially what really touched me was the loyalty portrayed in the characters and the longing I felt for that kind of loyalty," Lee said. "Later, I realized what Dorothy was really in search of was herself. But I related mostly to the lion, when people had all these expectations of you being big and brave, while internally, all the time he was walking around petrified.
"I think the movie also demonstrates how futile it is to depend on someone else to meet your needs and make you happy."
The 1998 Dothan High School production of "The Wizard of Oz" touched a Dothan minister to the point of writing his next sermon on universal lessons he saw in the story. Dr. Lawson Bryan, senior minister of First United Methodist Church, said he saw something in the scarecrow, tin man, cowardly lion and the little lost girl from Kansas, with which his entire congregation could relate the following Sunday.
Perhaps partly because of the troubles Garland had in her off-camera life, many people most acutely in touch with their pain seem to feel a connection with the emotions expressed in many of her songs.
"The song, "Over the Rainbow" is a big reflection of that because she sung it with such sensitivity and from her soul," Dezso said. "The words to that song touch the hearts of people who have been wounded.
"Dorothy was a wounded, lost child and was quite aware of her feelings. She expressed a lot of the bravery, intellect and intuition that the scarecrow, tin man and cowardly lion had, yet thought they didn't."