“There’s something about it that sings,” said composer Paul Moravec of the letter by Marjorie Gaunt, above.

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The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

Eighty-eight-year-old Marjorie Gaunt is about to be whisked off to Carnegie Hall in a limousine to hear an unusual piece of music that is sure to rekindle painful memories from more than a half-century ago.

Gaunt, of North Kingstown, will be the guest tomorrow night of the Oratorio Society of New York, which is performing a choral work with a text based in part on a love letter she wrote to her late husband, an Army Air Force second lieutenant lost while on a World War II mission.

“I didn’t really want to go,” Gaunt said of the trip to New York, “because there’s a sadness to it. I don’t want to cry, even though it has been all these years.”

But Gaunt, an avid writer of poetry and a kayaker, said she could hardly turn down the offer from the choral group, seeing how they’re sending a limo to fetch her and treating her “like I was a queen or something.”

The choral piece that features Gaunt’s heartfelt words is Songs of Love and War, written in 1997 by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec. It also draws inspiration from a letter from another Rhode Islander of long ago, Civil War Maj. Sullivan Ballou, who was killed in the first Battle of Bull Run.

The never-sent Ballou letter, written in 1861 to his wife Sarah, was made famous when it appeared in Ken Burns’ public TV series The Civil War. Moravec also used letters from World War I and the Vietnam War in his choral composition.

Gaunt’s touching story came to light almost two decades ago when she responded to a newspaper appeal from a Bryant University professor who was writing a book based on the World War II letters sent overseas by wives, mothers and children. Composer Moravec came across the book by Judy Barrett Litoff while preparing his 20-minute cantata, and was struck by a letter from Gaunt to her husband, Rowland, a B-17 navigator shot down over the North Sea on Feb. 22, 1944.

“It was very moving,” said Moravec, who teaches at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y. “There’s something about it that sings.”

Moravec’s choral piece quotes from a letter Gaunt wrote to her husband in March 1944, before she knew he was missing in action. She was working in a law office in the Turks Head Building in Providence at the time, and mail was delivered to her desk.

“Dearest Rowland,” her letter begins. “No letter again today. I hope I get one this afternoon. The poor postman, he hates to come without a letter. He never looks my way when he hasn’t got one, and I can tell by the way he says ‘hello’ whether he has one or not.”

The note was one of several returned letters Gaunt kept in a shoebox after word came that her husband was missing. She came across the collection 20 years ago, when she moved from Cranston to her townhouse overlooking Fishing Cove near Quonset Point.

“I almost threw them away,” said Gaunt, who wrote her husband daily, “but I thought, I’ve kept them this long I might as well save them.”

Gaunt’s story brings a “human element” to Moravec’s stirring music, said Richard Pace, the president of the 180-member Oratorio Society of New York.

“This is not just a text but the embodiment of a living person who’s still out there and coming down to the concert,” Pace said.

“It’s the personalization of a story of a woman writing her husband during war, an experience that unfortunately too many people are sharing these days.”

Gaunt is to be picked up tomorrow morning and taken to Carnegie Hall where she will meet members of the amateur choral group and sit in a box seat with Moravec, whom she has talked to on the phone but never met. She has heard a recording of Songs of Love and War, but never attended a live performance.

She was invited to New York a decade ago for the premiere of the piece by the Dessoff Choirs but decided against going. She felt she would be overcome by emotions.

“They didn’t press me,” she said, “and I didn’t go. But these guys pressed me.”

Gaunt said she doesn’t think about that sad time all that much any more, except perhaps at anniversaries. “Life’s gone on and everything’s OK,” she said.

But she has encountered coincidences that have reminded her of her husband.

Not long ago, she found a trampled note in the snow by her mailbox that said, “I love you, dear heart,” which is what Rowland used to call her. She also got the call this year from the Oratorio Society the day before the anniversary of Rowland’s death.

There have been other “spooky” occurrences over the years, she said.

Before she learned her husband was shot down she received a music box in the mail from London. She had a small music box collection as a child and felt certain this was a gift from Rowland. He was safe, thank God, but unable to write for some reason.

It turned out that Rowland, who was stationed in England, had found the music box in an antique shop, but at the time didn’t have the money to pay for it. He was planning to come back the following week, but was killed. When he failed to return from his mission, his buddies chipped in, bought the present and sent it to Marjorie with no explanation.

Once she uncharacteristically turned on CNN on a Saturday morning to find then President Clinton standing next to a war monument in the American cemetery in Cambridge, England. She could see Rowland’s name next to where Clinton was standing.

“All of a sudden a big sob came out of me,” she said.

Gaunt keeps active these days writing poetry and volunteering at the North Kingstown Free Library.

“I keep my head busy with poetry,” she said.

She owns two kayaks and a canoe and in good weather paddles over to Wickford Village. Once a dedicated hiker, she still walks three miles every morning. For 15 years she was a docent at the Rhode Island School of Design’s Museum of Art.

A few years after Rowland’s death, she married his older brother Arthur. Arthur had taken her to the prom at Cranston High School, but later became engaged to someone else. For many years after her second marriage, Gaunt had nightmares about Rowland’s return.

She and Arthur had three children and a “fun life,” she told a reporter in a 1990 Journal story. But tragedy struck a second time. Arthur died of a heart attack at the age of 42 on Feb. 23, one day after the anniversary of Rowland’s death.

At the time of that earlier article Gaunt said she sometimes feels sad seeing couples who have grown old together. But now, looking back on her life, she recalls good times hiking with the Appalachian Mountain Club. She made 18 hiking trips to Europe.

“I never thought I’d have a happy life,” she said, “because I thought my life was over.”

Still, there is that tender spot for a time more than 60 years ago.

“I love you so darling,” wrote Gaunt in the letter she will hear sung tomorrow night. “I get all tongue-tied when I try to tell you. When I go to [Grace] Church these noontimes, I kneel and I start to pray, and I can’t describe the feeling that comes over me. You and God and love are all mixed up, and my heart and mind are talking to you and God.

“It’s such a strong feeling. It just surges out of me. It wraps itself around you wherever you are and whatever you are doing. My mind usually sees you in a plane, and I can feel myself putting my arms around you, standing beside you while you are seated, and cradling your head against my breast, and protecting your body with mine, my spirit, really, I guess.

“And it’s so real to me. I love you so and miss you so. Be strong and have faith. It will be such a thrilling day — I hope it comes soon. God bless you, darling. I love you.

“Your Marjorie.”

cgray@projo.com