Music

Dora Magrath was blessed with a beautiful voice. She's gone, but you can still hear it.

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On first listen, Dora Magrath's song "Sky Is Blue" sounds like a story about a chance meeting and, perhaps, the struggles for two people to communicate:

"I met a man in the market

And I asked him why the sky is blue

He said, 'I don't know'

And I really think he didn't know

But I wonder, I wonder

I wonder if the sky is blue

I wonder if the sky is blue

The same way for me

As it is for you

Or is the sky more green for you"

In high school, Dora began suffering from a strange migraine condition. The main symptom of these migraines wasn't the usual headache pain. Instead, her father explains, "The colors shifted for her." Literally, she saw colors differently from most people.

However, the more serious symptom of her condition was the dark, intrusive thoughts it brought with it. "She didn't know when the thoughts were coming," her father says. "And when they did, she couldn't stop them."

Michael Magrath says his daughter received wonderful support at University City High School, from which she graduated in 2003, and at Hampshire. But in general, he says, the state of mental healthcare in St. Louis and the state of Missouri is "disgraceful."

To that end, the Central Reform Congregation has established the Dora Magrath Fund, whose proceeds will benefit mental health. (John J. Terranova, Central Reform's executive director, explains that because the fund is in its early stages, exactly how the money will be distributed has yet to be decided.)

In a letter Dora left behind, part of which her father read at her funeral, she asks her family and friends to "remember not how I died, but how I lived."

Dora's friend Ragni Kidvai has created a memorial Web site, doramagrath.wordpress.com, where viewers can watch, among other videos, Dora's rendition of "Amazing Grace." She sings the entire hymn, her remarkable voice growing more confident with each of the three verses. At the end, she blows the camera a kiss and then, just as the video ends, she peers down at her computer screen, perhaps to make sure the video recorded properly, or maybe to see who might be watching.

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