{"id":5425,"date":"2026-05-11T07:35:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T11:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5425"},"modified":"2026-05-11T07:35:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T11:35:37","slug":"a-second-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/11\/a-second-chance\/","title":{"rendered":"A Second Chance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Music was always her refuge, but Ella Fitzgerald never thought she would be a singer until she won an Amateur Night contest at the Apollo Theater in 1934.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>

On Wednesday, November 21, 1934, during one of the darkest stretches of the Great Depression, Harlem’s Apollo Theater held an Amateur Night.

Aspiring dancers or singers could take the stage and try to win over the Apollo crowd, which was notorious for being rough on mere pretenders.\u00a0\u00a0

One of the hopefuls was a 17-year-old girl who lived by herself on the streets of Harlem.

She was the daughter of a laundress and a shipyard worker who never married.\u00a0After her father left the family, her stepfather abused her.\u00a0When she was 15, her beloved mother died from injuries suffered in a car accident. Adrift and alone, she dropped out of high school, where she had been an excellent student.\u00a0

The truancy courts placed her in the Colored Orphan Asylum, where she was beaten. She ran away.\u00a0She earned pennies by singing and dancing on street corners, and by serving as a lookout for a brothel, providing advance warning of the approach of local cops.\u00a0 \u00a0

Homeless for nearly two years, she dreamed of becoming a dancer on a real stage.\u00a0

She went to the Apollo Theater that November evening hoping to compete.\u00a0But as soon as she realized that a couple of particularly gifted dancers were also in the running, she lost her nerve.\u00a0

She decided to sing instead.\u00a0\u00a0

She stepped into the spotlight looking awkward and disheveled.\u00a0She wore second-hand clothes and men’s boots she had found on the street.\u00a0Looking into the faces that were staring up at her, she succumbed to nervousness, launching her one shot at glory by singing in the wrong key.

Those in the crowd, who typically displayed all the compassion of a Gong Show<\/em> audience, immediately rolled their eyes. Get this girl out of here<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0

That’s when the Master of Ceremonies stepped in.

“Folks, hold on now, this young lady’s got a gift she’d like to share with us tonight.\u00a0She’s just having a little trouble getting it out of its wrapper.\u00a0Let’s give her a second chance.”

Those words changed Ella Fitzgerald’s life.

She regathered her composure and knocked her two songs out of the park.\u00a0Ella won the contest and the $10 prize, although the manager of the Apollo Theater made no effort to help her get into show business, seeing as he couldn’t imagine crowds appreciating a mere street orphan.\u00a0

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Fitzgerald was scooped up by Chick Webb’s jazz band\u00a0and wowed audiences who were desperate for joy in the midst of the country’s economic woes. In 1937, at the age of 19, she co-wrote and recorded A-Tisket A-Tasket<\/em>, a swing anthem based on a children’s nursery rhyme. It remained #1 on America’s music charts for 17 consecutive weeks.\u00a0\u00a0

Check out her performance in the 1942 Abbott and Costello comedy, \u201cRide Em Cowboy:\u201d Ella Fitzgerald “A-Tisket-A-Tasket”<\/a>

Listen for the flawless tones and perfect pitch that led millions to call Ella Fitzgerald the Queen of Swing and later the Queen of Song.\u00a0She would go on to win 14 Grammy Awards and receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Fitzgerald always acknowledged the gracious intercession of that Master of Ceremonies, whose name we do not know, as opening the door to everything that followed.\u00a0It\u2019s a wonderful thing to receive a second chance.

And it just so happens that God is the Master of Ceremonies of Second Chances.

One of the Old Testament prophets tells us, \u201cThrough the Lord\u2019s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness\u201d (Lamentations 3:22-23).

Because of God\u2019s immeasurable kindness, even when we\u2019re \u201cout\u201d we\u2019re not out. Every new day is a new beginning.

And it may be that we can be the one to offer a fellow struggler that very word of encouragement.

Do you know someone who has a gift they need to share with the world, but is having trouble getting it out of the wrapper?\u00a0Do you know someone who needs a second chance?\u00a0

Late in life, Ella Fitzgerald looked back on her humble beginnings.

“It isn’t where you came from,” she said. “It’s where you’re going that counts.”\u00a0

By God’s grace, choose to offer an encouraging word to help someone else move from a disheartening past to a hopeful future. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here On Wednesday, November 21, 1934, during one of the darkest stretches of the Great Depression, Harlem’s Apollo Theater held an Amateur Night. Aspiring dancers or singers could take the stage and try to win over the Apollo crowd, which was notorious for being rough on mere pretenders.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the hopefuls… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-5425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-encouragement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5427,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions\/5427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}