Monday nights Alice Roark played piano, accompanying rehearsals of the Decatur Civic Chorus. Wednesday nights she played organ or piano at church choir rehearsals. Sundays she played for church services. And during the workweek, she spent her days solving problems for the marketing department of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
And she did all that for years.
"As an accompanist, Alice was especially helpful at rehearsals," said its director, Mary Anne Sharp of Conyers. "She instinctively knew which vocal parts needed help. She could tell instantly when, say, the tenors were slightly off and would play their notes as they sang to get them back on pitch."
Ms. Roark played piano for the Decatur Civic Chorus for 25 years, off and on. She traveled with the chorus on three of its overseas tours -- to Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and France in 1968, to Germany and Austria in 1978 and to Spain in 1989.
Alice Roark, 64, of Clermont died April 4 at Northeast Georgia Health Center in Gainesville of cancer complications. Her memorial service is 11 a.m. Saturday, April 30, at the Stockbridge United Methodist Church. Flanigan Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
Born in Atlanta, Ms. Roark moved to Ellenwood during her childhood. Her only musical training involved piano lessons and playing trombone in the Southwest DeKalb High School band. What she learned about playing the organ and the history of church music she taught herself, her family said.
The Rev. Wiley Stephens, now senior pastor at Dunwoody United Methodist Church, said he was pastor at Kelley's Chapel United Methodist Church in south DeKalb in the late 1960s when Ms. Roark came there as organist and choirmaster.
"At the time, our church was transitioning from a rural church to a suburban church, and Alice brought a depth of musical knowledge and talent the congregation hadn't known before," he said.
Later she was accompanist for Methodist churches in Lithonia and Stockbridge.
"Alice played beautifully," said the Rev. Jim McRae, pastor at the Stockbridge United Methodist Church. "She had a talent that can only be described as a gift from God. It was a blessing to have her with us."
And at work she was equally talented.
Bill Means, retired manager of consumer marketing for Atlanta Newspapers, of Atlanta said Ms. Roark's newspaper colleagues respected her attention to detail and her mastery of marketing numbers.
"She was always dead-on with her calculations. If there was a dispute over numbers, she always was right," he said.
Ferguson Rood, retired vice president of research and marketing for Cox Newspapers, also of Atlanta, hired Ms. Roark in her early 20s as a research clerk for the AJC.
"Alice was eager to learn and very quickly became a research associate doing significant research projects. She wasn't one to get bogged down in theory. Instead, she got to the nub of things, applying good common sense," he said.
Ms. Roark, who never married, lived for many years in Lithonia but returned to Ellenwood in 1990 to care for her ailing mother, Ethel Roark. In 2001 her sister, Janie Watters, came from Oklahoma to Ellenwood to assist. The two sisters then relocated to Clermont after their mother's death in 2008, and Mrs. Watters cared for Ms. Roark during the final two years of her cancer treatment.
Ms. Roark was especially fond of dogs, said her brother, the Rev. John Roark of Buford.
"If she saw a stray that looked like it needed a home, she'd bring it back to her place. She was never without at least two or three dogs around the house," he said.
Also surviving is another brother, Robert Roark of Stockbridge.
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