Elsie Replogle “raised us with her 10 fingers,” said one of her daughters, Jeanna Wearing of Colorado Springs.
Replogle had a 50-year career as a professional pianist and organist, playing for hundreds of weddings and funerals, several churches and at least one synagogue. She was a frequent accompanist for soloists and a staff organist for two local mortuaries.
Elsie Replogle died Oct. 27 at a care center in Durham, N.H. She was 98.
A memorial service will be held later.
From the age of 4 she was never far from a piano, and her daughters said there wasn’t anything she couldn’t play.
Married and divorced twice, Elsie Replogle was “a clever and resourceful” provider, Wearing said. “She was the strongest, most determined woman I ever knew.”
Classical music was her love, but when playing at a funeral she’d follow a family’s wishes and turn on the pop numbers such as “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” or bluegrass songs such as “Life is Like a Mountain Railroad.”
“She was elegant and serious,” Wearing said. “There was nothing glitzy or show-biz about her.”
In the 1930s she played for an early morning exercise program on KOA radio, said her daughter Carol Clark of Newfields, N.H.
She played for a variety of religious groups and was attracted to the metaphysical, but was “a religious maverick. Her mind foraged in many meadows,” Wearing said.
Elsie Replogle was constantly learning, whether it was Denver history, Colorado mining, gardening or writing poetry, said her daughter Sylvia Replogle of Denver.
She played opera records for her daughters and they sometimes acted out the roles in costume. “I can still sing some of those arias today,” said Sylvia Replogle.
Elsie Replogle expected her daughters to learn musical instruments, something Sylvia wasn’t crazy about.
She read Shakespeare and Mark Twain to them and expected good manners.
“She was an Anglophile and loved Queen Elizabeth,” said Sylvia Replogle. When one of the girls did something Elsie Replogle considered unmannerly, she would say, “is that what Queen Elizabeth would do?”
Replogle rarely took vacations because of her schedule — sometimes playing for four funerals a day and maybe a rosary in the evening, Wearing said.
Elsie Frances Watts was born in Denver on Aug. 31, 1912, graduated from Manual High School and attended Denver University. Her father gave her a Steinway grand piano for high school graduation.
In addition to her daughters, she is survived by one grandchild.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
