Jane Jarvis, Former Mets Organist, Displaced by NYC Crane Accident; She Had Seen Crane Swaying in the Wind (and other Mets nostalgia)
The 146-ton crane that collapsed in New York City this past March 15, forced 300 apartments to be evacuated. One of the people displaced by the collapse is Jane Jarvis, who played the organ for the New York Mets at Shea Stadium from 1964 through 1979. Weeks before the crane toppled, Ms. Jarvis, who is now 92 years of age, said that she saw it swaying in a windstorm, and we were praying to God that it wouldnt fall. Ms. Jarvis is remembered at Shea for playing an alternate theme song, "Let's Go Mets", as the team took the field before before every game, as well as for her renditions of the Mexican Hat Dance during the seventh-inning stretch. Before the Mets, Jarvis was organist for the Milwaukee Braves for 8 years. When she left the Mets, she was replaced by a machine. After the Mets gig, she decided to concentrate on jazz piano. She became a fixture at New York nightclubs. Jarvis has released several albums of her jazz piano work, including Jane Jarvis Jams (1995) and Atlantic/Pacific (2000). In other Mets news (wholly unrelated to the playing of baseball games), Karl Ehrhardt, the Sign Man, died last month at the age of 83. From 1964-1981, the Sign Man, an ad designer, had a season ticket in the field boxes at Shea. At the games, he kept a bag of home-made professional-quality signs. When something significant happened, he would stand and hold up a sign that would comment on the action. He had 1200 signs in all, the most famous of which may have been There Are No Words, which he held up when Cleon Jones made the catch that ended the 1969 World Series in victory for the Miracle Mets.
