From parent to child, a song in key of life
By Esther Friedman, Globe Correspondent | May 13, 2007

Anna Huckabee-Tull has a songwriter's dream job: People hire her to write music for them. The projects taken on by the Somerville singer-songwriter have varied, but none compare with the song she wrote to help a distant relative, Andy Eddowes, tell his daughter that he will soon die.

Eddowes is in the latter stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease. Its progression forced the 47-year-old resident of Virginia Beach, Va., to retire from the Navy in 2005 after 22 years of service.

As Huckabee-Tull watched her cousin grow weaker , she suggested the idea of a song in January.

"Hardly anyone outside our family can understand my speech, so I have a talking computer," Eddowes wrote in an e-mail. "If it weren't for advanced assistive computer programs and the Internet, I'd be living a far less interesting and more isolated existence. As it is, the world is open to me."

Because ALS is a neurodegenerative disease that attacks the brain's ability to control muscle movement, Eddowes can't walk, lift his arms, or swallow. But the computer enabled him to express his innermost thoughts in e-mail interviews with Huckabee-Tull over the course of a month.

Soon, their communication deepened to unexpected levels.

"At first, it seemed that he could only manage one question a day," she said. "When I got to the fifth question it was like he was inside my brain. Suddenly it was not about sickness. It was not about health. It was about one human being connecting with another . . . it's not just that his brain is still intact; it's as if it's blooming."

When it came time to write the song, a gift to his daughter, it poured out in a couple of hours. "Bright Eyes" celebrates the joyful memories -- sailing with his daughter, pushing her on a swing -- while lamenting his loss, and expressing his love:

" Watch for me, eternally, feel for me in the passing breeze.

"One day, I'll be sailing free right beside you and you will see me, with your bright eyes."

Eddowes cried for a long time when he first heard it, he said. "I loved it!"

Huckabee-Tull laughs now, saying how she cautioned Eddowes that his daughter, in her early teens, may not know how to react. It turns out that his daughter loves the song, too.

Given the initial reactions to "Bright Eyes," Huckabee-Tull's record label, Brave Records, offered to post the song on iTunes as an ALS fund-raiser. When Huckabee-Tull proposed the idea to Eddowes, he contacted his ALS Association chapter in Virginia Beach.

Gary Leo, chief executive officer and president of the national ALS Association, happened to be visiting a patient in Virginia Beach at the time.

The chapter's executive director, Ken Nicholls, told him about "Bright Eyes" and the fund-raiser. They drove to the Eddowes house to meet him and listen to the song.

"I have two daughters. For me it was like a tribute to my daughters," Leo said in a phone interview. "I could visualize this little girl sailing on the Coronado, and him being there in a spiritual sense. It was one of the most spiritually moving experiences of my entire life."

On Leo's invitation, Huckabee-Tull performed "Bright Eyes" at the ALS Association's spring meeting in Boston.

As Leo introduced her and told the story behind the song, his voice wavered and cracked.

When she introduced "Bright Eyes" by describing how, upon first hearing the song, her cousin's daughter ran over and hugged him, Huckabee-Tull's voice cracked, too. And when she was done singing, the teary audience gave her a standing ovation.

In honor of May's status as ALS Awareness Month, Leo will fly Huckabee-Tull, Eddowes, and his wife and daughter this week to Washington, D.C., where she will perform "Bright Eyes" for a national association gathering.

The song has become more than a gift to one girl.

But despite the attention, Eddowes has a simple wish for it: He wants it to remind his daughter of what he was like before he got sick, and of how much he loves her.

To hear "Bright Eyes," go to customcraftedsongs.com/content/ songofthemonth.