CHICAGO -- As Bill Studwell lay in bed, his body weak from battling lymphoma, all he could think about was writing the letter.
"I just need to get this done," he kept telling his daughter, who was befuddled by his sense of urgency but dutifully took dictation at his bedside.
On that hot and humid Sunday in August, Studwell, 74, was completely preoccupied with Christmas carols.
He seemed relieved as she typed the title of one particular carol in the letter, sealed the envelope and sent it to officials at Northern Illinois University.
He died the next morning.
It was just a few months shy of the Christmas that was to culminate a 25-year project that sprung from Studwell's fascination with holiday music and grew into him being recognized as the nation's foremost expert on Christmas carols.
"In retrospect, he probably knew" his death was near, said his daughter, Laura Studwell, 32. "He probably felt something," she said, wiping tears. "He knew he had to make sure the tradition continued."
Began with a gift
It all started with a humble holiday gift.
Studwell crafted a homemade Christmas present for a relative in the early 1970s, a pamphlet on "O Holy Night" based on his own research of the song's history, melody and lyrics.
His family raved about the little secrets of a tune they'd heard hundreds of times before in church, on the radio, as background noise during holiday shopping.
And Studwell grew intrigued by the prospect of unearthing the pasts of other carols, the songs he'd fallen in love with as a boy singing in his church choir in Stamford, Conn.
"The music, in addition to its artistry, conspires with other elements that affect the mind and senses - the lights, the colors, the tastes of food, even the feel of snow - to make us laugh and think, to feel warm and happy, to bind us all together," he told the Chicago Tribune a few years ago, explaining his fascination with holiday music.
He began studying every Christmas tune he could think of, taking sabbaticals from his job as a Northern Illinois University library cataloguer and library science professor to comb through history books.
In 1986 Studwell created a series, Carol of the Year, in which he honored one Christmas tune annually and explained its origins and history in a newsletter sent out by the university. The simple project was featured in newspapers and radio programs across the country, and media came to consider Studwell the go-to carol expert each Christmas season.
Before his death, the librarian gave 600 or so interviews, penned several books on Christmas music and edited dozens of others. He served as a consultant in the Disney film "A Christmas Carol" starring Jim Carrey - charged with ensuring all the music was period-appropriate.
"He loved the attention," said Laura Studwell, remembering how her dad would make everyone in the house sit silent during his phone interviews, as he'd expound on the history of the Magi or why caroling door-to-door isn't as common today.
Christmas was his time of year. He would host huge holiday parties, singing classic Christmas carols in his strong, deep voice, as well as those he wrote. His favorite original song was called "Christmas Grouch," sung to the tune of "Jingle Bells," bemoaning the hassles of shoveling snow, paying bills and other chores of the season.
Carol of the Year
From the beginning, Studwell envisioned Carol of the Year as a 25-year series, set to end with its final song this Christmas season. As he grew sick and weak, he fixated on naming the finale and making sure the quarter-century tradition could carry on with or without him.
It got to be all he talked about in his last weeks, his daughter remembers.
As they worked on that final letter to Northern Illinois University, he scrawled eight paragraphs on yellow legal paper, crossing out words here and there and replacing them in the margins. Laura Studwell typed and helped him conjure the appropriate dates and facts when his jaw clenched with frustration, though she privately thought his health would improve. She assumed the letter was a product of her father's penchant for planning.
"I am requesting you do Carol of the Year on your own, without my direct assistance," he wrote to his friend Joe King, who does public relations for Northern Illinois University and helped him with the series for the past 13 years.
Two days before Thanksgiving, King spread the news via e-mail that the last song in the series was tinged with sorrow because the carol expert was gone.
"It is a natural last piece for focus, since it is frequently the final piece in carol performance sessions," Studwell explained in the letter.
King heard the song the other day while holiday shopping with his son and thought of his friend. It was bittersweet for him, knowing that Studwell wouldn't hear it.
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Some holiday trivia, from the writings of carol expert Bill Studwell.
"O Holy Night"
The deeply religious lyrics were written by relatively obscure poet Placide Cappeau, who actually became more eccentric in his later years, taking on anticlerical and somewhat socialist views. "The strangest act of that period was a request to be buried upright after his death," Studwell writes in his book "The Christmas Carol Reader."
He also tells the story of a Christmas Eve during the Franco-Prussian War, when a French soldier unexpectedly jumped out of his trench and sang the hymn. Instead of firing, the Germans responded with their own carol, Martin Luther's "From Heaven Above to Earth I Come."
"Whether or not this incident is true or apocryphal, it ideally illustrates the legacy of the carol," Studwell says.
"Silent Night"
This classic wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for a rusty organ.
It was Christmas Eve 1818 in St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria, when the priest noticed rust had grown all over the church organ, rendering it temporarily useless. He quickly penned an emergency poem "Silent Night," and the organist devised a tune for guitar, two soloists and a choir. The organ repairman later took a copy of the song and initiated its spread.
"Good King Wenceslas"
There really was a ruler Wenceslas, but he was actually a duke of Bohemia in the 10th century, and his Czech name was Vaclav. Studwell says Vaclav really was good, known for his piety and charity. The same couldn't be said for his brother Boleslav, who assassinated Vaclav to assume the throne. But the good Vaclav persevered in spirit, honored later as the patron saint of Bohemia.
"Jingle Bell Rock"
It was introduced to the public in 1957, "exactly 100 years after the creation of 'Jingle Bells'," in 1857, Studwell says.
