 Walter Cronkite was an American broadcast journalist and anchorman for the CBS Evening News. While he was alive, he was called the most trusted man in America. He reported on world events like World War II and the moon landing. In 1954, Walter Cronkite had a special musical guest on his show to give a live performance. It would be another 50 years before the music of this particular guest was ever heard again on the national airways. And by the time her music was heard again, the artist herself was nowhere to be found. Because 20 years after she appeared on Walter Cronkite's show, she vanished. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always, a very, very, very special thank you to all of our patrons. If you would like to join our Patreon community, there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today on Mystery Monday, we are going to be talking about the disappearance of Connie Converse. Connie Converse was born Elizabeth Eaton Converse on August 3rd of 1924. She was born in New Hampshire, spent most of her life in Concord, New Hampshire, and her parents were allegedly very strict Baptist. In fact, her father was even a minister. Connie or Elizabeth, as was her legal name, was the middle of three children. She had one older brother named Paul, who was three years older than her, and a younger brother named Phillip, who was five years younger than her. Connie and Phillip would go on to have a very, very close relationship and he will come up later on in our story regarding her disappearance. Connie grew up in an extremely strict home. Her parents were supporters of prohibition of alcohol and they expected nothing but traditional Christian values from their children. Even though their home was relatively strict, the parents were also huge supporters of the art. It is said that Connie's mother herself was extremely musical. There's also stories that Connie and her siblings would frequently act out Shakespeare's plays for fun with artwork created by Connie herself as the backdrop in their own little family theater. Connie graduated the Val of Victorian of Concord High School. She was an extremely intelligent woman. She even got a scholarship to Mount Holy Oak College, but she only stayed there for two years. After two years, Connie's life and her life destiny took a turn. She dropped out of her conservative college, her conservative family, and moved herself to the heart of New York City. Connie found herself a little apartment in Greenwich Village. And she found a job at IPR, which is the Institute of Pacific Studies. She was a writer for this company and would frequently write essays. IPR was eventually shut down. This was a very scandalous situation as the company was found to have ties with communist leaders. After that job was lost, she then got a job as a secretary at the Academy Photo Offset. At this time, as a young adult, Connie started to enjoy the hustle and the bustle and the liveliness of the New York nightlife. Living in Greenwich Village at this time was a bohemian world of artists, musicians, and free spirits. To her parents' dismay, Connie started heavily smoking and drinking. She also started to write her own music. And in her little apartment in Greenwich Village, she would often record her melodies. Connie was said to be a very, very private person. Even her own friends didn't know too, too much about her life or how she felt about certain things. However, Connie did have a certain melancholy about her. Connie herself even said that she would go into what she called the blue funk. Unfortunately, around this time, we did not know that much about mental health. And it seems pretty obvious that Connie Converse struggled with something that a lot of us struggle with. And that's depression. Being a private person, Connie would only really play her songs for her friends. And being able to sit and listen to Connie's songs gave her friends a bit of insight into how Connie was really feeling. Her songs were haunting and moving and really showed the true condition of the human spirit. Her younger brother Philip would end up becoming a professor at the University of Michigan. And Connie kept that relationship with her brother Philip alive. She would send her brother tapes each month of songs that she had written. She called this her song of the month club and Philip himself would beam with pride when he got to hear what his talented sister had created. Gene Deech was an illustrator living in New York City at the same time. And Gene Deech and Connie Converse had mutual friends. Now at this time, Deech was doing the illustration for a music magazine called The Record Changer. Some of you might recognize this man's name as he would go on to be the animator of both Popeye and Tom and Jerry. Because of Deech's connections, Deech was able to get Connie Converse a spot on Walter Cronkite's show. And in 1954, she went on the air to perform live for the nation. Now unfortunately because this was the 1950s and this was a live performance, no video tapes are still around from this show. However, this gave Connie Converse the confidence that she needed to start sending out her cassette tapes to record labels. Connie continued to send out her music to record labels for seven years. But unfortunately, none of the record labels bit. By 1961, Connie tucked her tail and left New York City. She moved to Ann Arbor where her brother Philip had gotten her a job at the University of Michigan's Journal of Conflict Resolution. At first, Connie was the secretary, but very quickly moved up to becoming the editor. Now it is said that when she moved to Michigan, she never wrote music again. And this, according to many psychiatrists, is a sign of major depression when someone just stops doing what they love so much. Connie Converse started to isolate herself even more, ignoring letters from friends and spiraling downward into drinking and smoking even more. Ten years after her move to Ann Arbor, Connie Converse lost her job. The Journal of Conflict Resolution moved from the University of Michigan to Yale. She also would go on to learn that she would need a hysterectomy. Now nobody really knows why she needed a hysterectomy, but we do know that this was really impactful on Connie. For some reason, the doctors were going to have to remove her uterus. Now the interesting thing about Connie is that she never knowingly had a relationship. But it is known that she loved children. Now at 48 years old in 1971, she might have been a little bit too old to have a child. However, the emotional trauma of losing that organ as a woman had to have been very, very intense for Connie and probably pushed her deeper into a depression. Her friends became worried about her and they pulled all their money together to send her on an adventure of a lifetime. They got her a ticket to England where she would spend six months there exploring England and other parts of Europe. Connie had never been to Europe and she did take her friends up on the offer. Even though she struggled with bouts of depression while she was in London, she seemed to have a pretty good time. As she came back to Ann Arbor, her mother even offered to take her on a trip to Alaska. Which Connie begrudgingly accepted. You see, Connie's parents again had not been very supportive of her life in New York City, but she still went on this trip with her mom. By August of 1974, Connie was 50 years old. Her life had not gone as planned and her blue funk as she called it was getting worse and worse and worse. Connie wrote a series of letters to all of her friends and family saying that she needed to start over. She needed to go out there and start a new life. She asked her friends and family to just let her go. Her letter to her brother Philip was the most detailed and in this letter she included a check. She asked her brother Philip if he would continue to pay her health insurance each month until a particular date and at that time to stop paying the insurance. Connie Converse packed up her Volkswagen Beetle and drove off never to be seen again. Connie's brother Philip kept paying her health insurance as she requested up until the date she asked him to stop and he stopped. At one point the family even hired a private investigator to try to find Connie, but this private investigator told the family that even if he were to locate her, he wouldn't necessarily tell them where she was because she was a 50 year old woman and she had every right to go off and disappear. In the 1980s, it came to her brother's attention that there was an Elizabeth Converse in the phone book in Kansas. However Philip never contacted this particular person because again he wanted to try to respect his sister's wishes. Even though this might have been an indication that she was still alive, Philip believed that it was a possibility that she had decided to remove herself from this life. I know you guys know I can't say the s word because of YouTube. But we do know that Connie did struggle with depression. And since this was a time period where there wasn't a whole lot of knowledge around mental health, there is a huge possibility that her brother could have been right. Life had just gotten too hard for Connie. However many people hope and believe that she is still alive out there somewhere. Now today she would be 97 years old. So the likelihood of her actually being alive today is pretty slim. But that doesn't mean that she didn't have the possibility of dying of natural causes later on in an appropriate time of her life. In 2004 Gene Deech was invited onto a New York public radio show to promote his book of animation. Instead he brought a bunch of recordings of his old and missing friend Connie to play on air. In 2004 the world had changed drastically since 1954. The last time Connie had been on air. And soon Connie Converse's music became a cultural icon. And in 2009 an album was finally released to the public of all of her music. This album was entitled How Sad, How Lovely. Many of her fans want to believe that the then 80 year old Connie got to enjoy the fact that her music was finally being heard and finally being loved by audiences all over the world. And if that's the case the 80 year old Connie never stepped forward to claim her rightful place in the spotlight. Now when I first heard this story I became mesmerized by the person of Connie Converse. There is so much about her that we all can relate to, unmet dreams. Not being able to fulfill the expectations of your parents and just the general idea of potential mental health disorders that possibly went untreated. Many people said that part of the reason why Connie did not sell her music in the 1950s is again because she was a woman before her time. She wasn't classically beautiful as the women of the 1950s were and her music was highly intelligent. In one podcast I listened to regarding Connie Converse they speculated that if Connie was doing this today in 2021 she would be a sensation. Hell her music already is a sensation in 2021. She could have opened up a YouTube channel and played her songs and her looks would not have mattered so much today as they would have back then. There's also been speculation about Connie's sexuality. In 2021 we're not so concerned about someone's sexuality. It doesn't really matter to us what somebody does in private. However in the 1950s if Connie was a lesbian that might have made her life even more difficult. And we have no reports of her ever being in a relationship with anyone. If she ever was in a relationship with anyone she kept it very very private. And of course if this truly was the case with Connie it could have really taken a toll again on her mental health. Now down in the description box below I will link some videos to Connie's music for you all to enjoy. Of course I had to go and buy a Connie Converse t-shirt and in true Bryce style I cut it because that's pretty much what I do with all my t-shirts now. Now before I close out this video there's one really interesting part to Connie Converse's disappearance that I must tell you guys. Sometimes it's hard to find a person or even harder to find a body. However with cars it's typically a lot easier to find a car. And Connie's Volkswagen Beetle has also never been seen again. What do you think happened to Connie Converse? Also let me know if you had heard this story before and what you think of her music. I hope you guys have a fantastic day. Thank you again to Josh McKay for doing our music for this show. If you would like to purchase the full opening song there is a link down in the description box below and as always thank you so much to Todd Roderick for helping me get this video out to you guys. Have a wonderful wonderful day and I will talk to you soon. Bye.