96-Y-O Man's Love Song to Late Wife 'Oh Sweet Lorraine' Breaks Into iTunes Top 10
A 96-year-old man's love song "Oh Sweet Lorraine," which he wrote to celebrate the 75-year love he shared with his late wife, Lorraine, who died earlier this year in April at the age of 91, is now one of the top ten most downloaded songs on iTunes.
As of Thursday evening, the tear-jerking "Oh Sweet Lorraine," was tucked between Miley Cyrus' "We Can't Stop" and Lorde's "Royals" on the iTunes Top Ten Songs chart.
The man, Fred Stobaugh of Illinois, had no experience as a musician or songwriter according to a viral YouTube video that was published in July.
The grieving widower decided however to enter a songwriting contest advertised in a local paper by Green Shoe Studio.
The submissions were supposed to be made electronically but Stobaugh sent in his handwritten entry tucked inside a large Manila envelope.
Green Shoe's Jacob Colgan said he was so moved by the old man's entry he decided to produce his song despite the entry not meeting the contest requirements.
"I started to read the lyrics and was so touched by the song and without even meeting Fred we thought, we're going to do something," Colgan said in the video.
"Oh sweet Lorraine," the chorus begins, "I wish we could do all the good times over again. Oh sweet Lorraine, life only goes around once but never again," it continues in part.
"She was just the prettiest girl I ever saw," Stobaugh said about his wife, whom he met in 1938, in the YouTube video. She was "real timid-like. I just fell in love with her right there," he added.
The couple married in 1940. They raised three children who gave them four grandchildren, and would have celebrated their 73rd anniversary in June.
"After she passed away, I was just sitting in the front room one evening by myself, and it just came right to me," Stobaugh said of his song. "I just kept humming it and singing it. That's how I came to write it. It just fit her."
Colgan puts Stobaugh's song to music with his permission and when he heard it for the first time in the YouTube video he declared: "Wonderful…just wonderful."